Why is bear so underrated?

I'm with Hoytcanon fantastic and sustainable. Zero industry or garbage around. Clean delicious and plentiful. My only reliable source of meat. Eat some form of bear meat 7 days a week.
 
Love a good bear!!!

HRPV8YW.jpg


qZYaghm.jpg


5MY6wlD.jpg


yEB5vki.jpg


NRCnRJE.jpg


ZJyXJyA.jpg


d4l46f5.jpg


di9hKfZ.jpg


And a new to me recipe I am itching to try out:

https://www.americanhunter.org/articles/2016/4/14/recipe-candied-black-bear-backstrap/

Cheers!
Nog
 
Bears eat a lot of carrion and depending on where you find them they eat a lot of garbage waste so they have a reputation of having dirty meat and gamey. I have never tried bear either, Growing up the ones we shot we skinned them only and never took the meat. Honestly I would have to say I have that bias as well as I have never considered hunting bear for meat
 
the spank said:
Only bear I'd interested in hunting is one of these but of course you can't do that in AB or BC any longer. This one was just east of Jasper on thursday as I was headed to camp to work TMEP out of Valemount,BC.
Click to expand...

Go to the Yukon. I ate Grizz there in my guiding days. Was great!!!
 
Me, personally?

I've always seen black bears as just giant rats. Growing up they were a regular fixture at every dump and public campsite garbage (because city morons insist on feeding them).

I'm a firm believer that you are what you eat: you can easily see and taste the difference in eggs and chicken just by changing their feed for a few weeks.
Unfortunately I've seen enough of bears' feeding behavior to be turned off of eating them in turn. They're scavengers that are even less discerning about what they eat than raccoons. I've heard from several different people that if you shoot a bear within 50 miles of a dump they literally taste like garbage.

Maybe free-range bear fattened on acorns, berries and salmon tastes delicious... but there are none of those around here.
 
manbearpig said:
Me, personally?

I've always seen black bears as just giant rats. Growing up they were a regular fixture at every dump and public campsite garbage (because city morons insist on feeding them).

I'm a firm believer that you are what you eat: you can easily see and taste the difference in eggs and chicken just by changing their feed for a few weeks.
Unfortunately I've seen enough of bears' feeding behavior to be turned off of eating them in turn. They're scavengers that are even less discerning about what they eat than raccoons. I've heard from several different people that if you shoot a bear within 50 miles of a dump they literally taste like garbage.

Maybe free-range bear fattened on acorns, berries and salmon tastes delicious... but there are none of those around here.
Click to expand...

Whoever told you that was ... full of garbage. And I question how they'd even know, unless they've been eating at the dump themselves?

But I mean, I'm glad for the distaste for them. All the more bears for me to shoot.
 
Bear is great! My dad used to say they were gross and smelly and greasy. I took one myself back when I was 21 or 22 or thereabouts. Nice fall bear in eastern Manitoba, well north of cottage country. Set up a few 5gal pails with cheap meat scraps, popcorn, oats, bulk feed, old pet food, whatever I could get cheap. I didn't even start baiting in advance, I literally drove out on a Sunday to make camp, position a ladder stand, and set the bait pails out. They were empty by Tuesday. I added some extra stuff to one of them and by late afternoon the bears were sniffing around. There was a real nice healthy adult male in the bunch, and I lined up a shot and gave him a Nosler-band sleeping pill.

He hit the dirt, DRT. I gave him a few minutes to bleed out, probably 5 or so. Everything cleared out of the area after the gunshot. Gave him a poke, stone dead. Nice bear. It was cool out (already below freezing into the evening) so I gutted him right there and rinsed out the cavity. Grabbed my toboggan and rolled him onto it, dragged him back to camp, and caped him up (quite poorly, I must add). Cut and quartered and into styrofoam coolers with a few ice blocks in it. I knew I was supposed to cut as much of the fat off of the meat as well for rendering. I didn't even stay the night, it was about 6:00pm and the sun had just set, the adrenaline was flowing and I hit the road for the 2.5 hours back to the Peg.

I found that braising and pressure cooking was the way to go to get rich, moist, fully cooked meat dishes. It is *quite* rich even with all the fat trimmed off, so we didn't really rip through it too quickly. I never got into smoking but it's another great way to get a steady temperature for a long time. Sous Vide also works, but I find it's not really comparable as doing the same with some good Western Canadian AAA beef. But it has a lot more in common with pork and wild boar, so that should have clued me in to not treating it like beef or other cervids.

My grandmother LOVED the fat I rendered down for her baking, and I did the Rinella "cook the bear in it's own fat" experiment as well (but cooked to medium-well so tasted like leather).

Basically echoing a lot of what others have said, get the guts out FAST, get the meat cool (like -4 degrees cool, the ride home in coolers packed in the truck bed was perfect), cut off as much of the fat as possible (but don't throw it out!), and cook it using low-and-slow methods to get it just right and it's exceptional. Even my old man was surprised by my braised bear short ribs.

I've taken probably another half dozen or so over the years. Excellent game, and a lot of fun to watch in the wild. I love bears.
 
Bear meat is simply delicious. But I presume like most meat (no surprise) it depends on the animal's diet, how it is handled, butchered, and cooked. I've had a few non-believers in my kitchen, fried ground bear and ground beef side by side, changed their minds about bear meat. There is a subtle difference but all of their "I've heard bear is greasy/gamey/etc." opinions are dispelled.
 
I've always been curious as to what cuts of meat you get from a bear? I know roasts and shank type cuts but do they have backstrap and tenderloin cuts similar to deer and moose? Does anyone ever cut their roasts into steaks? I've never heard of a bear burger but I assume that's a thing?
 
No desire to hunt bear. It’s an animal that is a top predator it generally has little wariness of humans and must be enticed by bait to a place to be able to hunt it. It is not a prey species with natural instincts to be wary of predators mainly because it has none. When hunted in areas where they are most prolific they are generally unafraid of us human hunters as they rarely encounter man due to the isolated area in which they live. I know some will argue that they are wary. But I’ve watched to many videos of bears climbing tree stand ladders to check out hunters or look directly at them, ignore and lumber to a bait barrel to chow down to believe that they even care we are there. They are an apex predator. It is hard to find challenge in hunting something that has little fear of anything other than one of its own.

just my take but I’d rather hunt something that is a prey species and is instinctually wary and no I don’t hunt over “bait piles” And yes I hunt over or near crop fields but I’m not going to argue if that is deemed as baiting ….and yes I have eaten bear and yes it is tasty..I just have no desire to hunt for one.
 
jlovie said:
I've always been curious as to what cuts of meat you get from a bear? I know roasts and shank type cuts but do they have backstrap and tenderloin cuts similar to deer and moose? Does anyone ever cut their roasts into steaks? I've never heard of a bear burger but I assume that's a thing?
Click to expand...

Bear burgers are great. Steaks are a bit of a challenge because rare or medium rare is pretty much out of the question due to the aforementioned trichinosis. But done right, bear steaks are terrific, especially those backstrap or tenderloin cuts.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom