Bear Meat

[Ridgerunner]

From reading the regs it looks like you are required to save your bear meat.  Does it taste good?  I really don't have any desire to eat a bear so I'm not sure what I'd do with it if I got one.  Any ideas? 

[boneaddict]

It really depends upon the bear (what it has been eating) whether it tastes good or not.  Most are kind of greasy and gamey compared to venison.  I always make mine into summer sausage and its awesome.  You indeed have to bring it out.

[Coasthunterjay]

Make sausage or jerky sticks. DELICIOUS!!!!! .

[jackelope]

I always make mine into summer sausage and its awesome.

i've heard the same but have never tried it.

[dogtuk]

ridgerunner

i will take it off your hands if you dont want the meat 

[actionshooter]

Summer sausage, jerky, peperoni, breakfast sausage, lunch meat, burger (when used in dishes, not hamburgers).
 All those are great.

[ICEMAN]

The bear that I have eaten is fantastic. We cooled and iced the meat as soon as we could, trimmed away extra fat, and found the meat excellent. Breakfast steaks,  or pan fried in olive oil, even shishkabobs. Very good. I intend to pressure can some meat the next time I get a bear.

[Krusty]

Why would anyone kill a bear if they didn't plan on eating it?

Bear meat is excellent when handled properly, cooled before it starts to go bad, and prepared well.

I love to slow cook a rack of bear ribs, in the Kettle-cooker.
Chops are very good, and a shoulder roast in the crock pot is really really good.
Bear meat is very much like pork, in taste and in the way you cook it.

The fat can be rendered down to a wonderful non-waxy clear oil, that is awesome for fried pastry like donuts or corn fritters, and cooled as a lard it makes light flaky pie crusts and biscuits.

Krusty

[jackelope]

Why would anyone kill a bear if they didn't plan on eating it?

i was wondering the same thing...
i know in alaska, there's coastal bears that are not edible at certain times of the year, fall i think, because of the amount of salmon they eat. there it is not required to pack out the meat during that season, just the head and hide, but i disagree with killing a bear without eating eat. the details may  be  off slightly there.

[VirginiaxBoi]

Krusty,

It sounds like you should write a bear meat cookbook. You would probable make a killin'. 

[boneaddict]

I believe the bear thing in Alaska has to do with Trichinella, not the salmon I believe.  Though fish bears are nasty. 

[jackelope]

bone...pretty sure this is your area of expertise, and i probably have something screwy, but do the bears get the trichonella infection from the salmon?

[Krusty]

VxB,

If you want to read a book, track down a copy of Ralph Flowers' Education of a Bear Hunter, or any of his other books.

He may have been the best bear hunter there ever was, he's a local legend for sure.
__________________________________

Trichinella is a parasite known to inhabit all members of the pig/dog arm of the evolutionary tree.
It's why pigs aren't Kosher, and why westerners don't eat dogs.

It has nothing to do with eating salmon.

Bears in Alaska are somewhat more "fishy" but that's mostly a hunter's wive's tale.
I ate bear from coastal Alaska (brown and black), when I lived up there, and it wasn't unpalletable.

I think it's more indicative of the type of hunters that pay to hunt in Alaska than the bears they are hunting.

It also has to do with the storage and transportation problems faced by tundra outfitters.
Keeping a few fish per person from spoiling, and adding that to a float plane, is hard enough, but 500 pounds of bear meat would require a plane of it's own.

Krusty

[Ridgerunner]

Well maybe I'll have to try it, I just didn't think that a bear could or would be that great to eat.  Seems like I have lots of options as to what to do with it, now I just have to find one.   

[Blacktail135]

 Fair warning.....don't eat a fish eating bear. Nasty! Of all the people that told me that fish eating bear's are nasty, none had actually tried it. So I gotta see for myself. I go and shoot a fish eating bear (2-3 year's ago) about 200 pounder. I took some liquid dishsoap to wash the bear off real good before gutting and skinning him. Didn't want to chance getting anything on the outside on the meat. Got him cleaned up, broke down, sacked up and home. Cooked some backstrap.......nasty! Now if you get a fish eating bear that hasn't been on the fish for very long....that may be different. After reading a book year's ago about the first feller's to cross the Olympic Mtn's. I had to try eating some fried bear fat. Seem's those boy's were in such a hurry to be the first across (there were 2-3 other team's waiting for spring) they went a bit early and about starved until they shot a bear. They made mention of frying the fat and drinking it. So I went up and shot a little berry eating bear (about a 100 pounder) brought him home, cubed up some of the fat (about 3/4"-1" cube's), fried them until they were a little crispy/crunchy on the outside and ate them.......all of them! Delicious. They are very rich though. Have fun, Patrick. 

[cohoho]

Coming from Alaska we were required only to keep the meat of Bear before 1 July after that it was your choice, we kept most except for the Brown Bear variety. (Never even thought to eat it especially when it had been laying in a dead Moose carcass for don't know how many days and maggots all thru the fur.) Had a couple fall Blackies right off the Sockeye and Silver salmon streams and didn't notice anything different on taste, but when they are eating the nasty ass Dog and Humpies that is a different story all together, I suppose.  Spring bears are the yummiest of all, nothing like a fatless Black bear early on.  Besides they are a heck of a lot easier to skin in the spring.  They make some incredible meat to can, the canning process really creates some great flavor.  Excellent sausages, a guy I used to take everything to, always stated to make it into a speciality that has been cooked at 170 degrees.  He wouldn't do jerky or summer type sausage due to lack of the temp. Kill off the Tric I guess......

[billythekidrock]

One of these days I will quite responding to this question.
The only thing better is a tender elk steak.

Having eaten the meat from almost 2 dozen black bears in WA I have never had a bad one. I have had spring bears with over 100lbs of fat to summer bears with no fat. Bears that had been feeding on berries to bugs to whole fawns in their gut.. You must trim all the fat and keep it cool. Cooking is also a big key in how it tastes. Slow cooking works best. BBQs are ok if you go slow and low. I prefer a slow cooker for roasts and backstraps. Canning is also great. Pre-cooked and ready for anything.
Gut, clean, cool, freeze and cook properly.
It boils down to preperation, from field to frying pan.

Why kill a bear if you are not going to eat it?

[ICEMAN]

Why kill a bear if you are not going to eat it?

Cause it was going to eat you first?  Aw, I guess I would eat it too, even if out of season if it charged me....

[Hunting Cowboy]

We have had the opportunity to kill a few bears and I can tell you that we do eat them. The bears we have gotten were all gorging on berries. One bear we couldn't eat the roasts while the others we could. But we basically make sausage, jerky, peperoni sticks, and hamburger out of all the meat. Our bears were an 8-1/2 yr old 225 pounder, a 6-1/2 year old 200 pounder, and 3-1/2 yr old 150 pounder. We mix the burger with a little beef fat.

[robb92]

My brother just got a WA bear up near Cusik and he brought some meat over and we just mad eup 10 pounds of summer sausage and man oh man was it awesome!!!! Nothing beats its for making summer sausage.

[LongTatLaw]

Hey RR,

DONT LISTEN to these guys!!! They are all liars!

Bear is nasty and it will make you very sick! But your lucky...I know how to dispose of such a disgusting piece of meat..

so, when you kill your bears you just call me and Ill take that yucky meat off your hands free of charge!! lol

JK, I love bear meat and Ive had it any way a piece of meat can be cooked...

If I kill one this year I might eat a piece raw... thats the only way Im not CERTAIN I love bear meat...so maybe its worth a try...lol

The Trich is bad business... we gut the Georgia wild boars like we were handling ebola virus!

Happy hunting those bears.. I got my eye on a big un today....!