Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game *Caution* Bear Meat

I wrote this on another hunting site and thought I might as well post it here too as it may keep someone from making the same mistake we did...

I have felt like crap for about 3 weeks now, well a week ago I was driving in town and felt short of breath and tightening of the chest. I pulled off the road thinking it would just go away, it didn't and got worse and worse until I felt like I was gasping for air so I called 911 and went for an ambulance ride to the ER..
At the ER they gave me oxygen and ran tests and x rays, nothing wrong on the x rays and blood work confirmed I was not having a heart attack (I'm 35) So they release me... The EKG did however raise some concern so they advised that I should have a heart stress test done (after they release me)to make sure all is good...
The next few days I was worried something was wrong with my heart.. I got sick of worrying so I went camping for the weekend (this last weekend) to clear my head and relax.. Well on the way home I get a text from a guy I met during a previous backpacking trip in Sept, it says...
"Hey Jason, just wondering if you and your brother got sick after eating that bear we killed, me and &^%&* did Doc thinks we have worms takes 4-6 weeks to start feeling bad"
DING!.. Light goes on..
Rewind to Sept 18th... Me and my bro backpacked into the high country where we met 2 guys that had killed a bear, we joined them at their camp for dinner where we had bear ribs and backstraps.. And looking back some of it was undercooked..
So I called him up and he asked me my symptoms (muscle fatigue,shortness of breath)and they are the same.. Now I figure I better get a hold of my bro since I have not heard from him in a while.. he probably has them too..Turns out he has been sick for 3 weeks with the same symptoms..
They can enter your central nervous system and cause respiratory paralysis ... This is what was happening to me...Scary
Sorry for the long post I'll shorten it up... All 4 of us got sick from the meat.. When the blood work comes back it will confirm that we all have Trichinosis which is very rare, only 12-20 cases in the USA a year..
If this sshit don't kill me I'm thinking of opening a bait shop... Think I'll call it "I GOT WORMS".....lol
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBrCaVySmDU

Yep undercooked bear will mess you up

This has been known for years. Swine and Bears can share 'Trichinosis' because of meat not cooked enough. This is why pork is always cooked done and not rare.
V

Here they automatically give you a trich test kit when you check in your bear.

What's involved in the test?

Quarentine the meat while they undercook it and feed it to a hippie

Welcome aboard Buck Snort!

Hope you get that crap under control.

Thanks HH !

iambrb, thats funny..lol

They start to worry when he can't take his usual lungbuster bong hits.....

I've read that freezing the meat will kill it, but when looking for verification I ran across this in wikipedia:

Freezing pork less than 6 inches thick for 20 days at 5 �F (−15 �C) or three days at −4 �F (−20 �C) kills larval worms.
Cooking wild game meat thoroughly. Freezing wild game meats, unlike freezing pork products, even for long periods of time, may not effectively kill all worms. This is because the species that typically infects wild game is more resistant to freezing than the species that infects pigs.

The figures that stick in my mind, but can't find a source for, is 3% chance for domestic pork and 6% chance for bear meat to have trichinosis. Fully cooking it prevents any problem.

Thanks for sharing. Are certain areas more prone to trichinosis than others?

Hope you get it under control. Not too spook you too much, but a young boy died from that malady in UT a few years back...

Pork, horsemeat, and wild game can all carry trichinosis, tho pork raised in the US is pretty low risk due to regulations and inspections (yeah, right!) according to my lookup. The older an animal is before consumption, the more likely it is to have had the time and opportunity to become infected.

I haven't seen anything on area concentrations/liklyhood for trich. Polar bears carry it, as well as do black and griz, throughout their ranges.

In "Mysteries of the Arctic", a pretty good case is made for(Hansen? of Hansen Bottle fame- a Norwegion explorer) and his partner dying in the Canadian Arctic from either Trich or from Vitamin A poisioning from consumption of polar bear meat/liver respectively.. Could have ben carbon monoxide too - why they call it a "mystery" I guess.

Keeping meat frozen for 3-4 weeks will kill the larvae- IIRC (I may not) the Univ of AK recommends 30 days at 0 degrees for absolute certainty on bear meat.

Many people get thichinosis and get over it without ever knowing they had it. About 40 diagnosed cases in the US each year. If it is intestinal, it can be cured with treatment. If in the muscles, it is there pretty much for good. It can also invade brain, lungs, and other organs.

If one digs beneath the surface of many Bibical and/or cultural restrictions there is often a good health issue behind them, pigs/trich. being one such example in the Jewish/Islamic spheres.

Leaves more bacon and pork chops for the rest of us....well cooked, of course.

I've read that the pre-Mosaic law people commonly ate meat raw. During the exodus, pigs ran wild and the people had no central 'bathrooms'. You can see the potential for disease and why God made that law.

A buddy of mine once watched a bear eat a loaded diaper out of a dump. That didn't do too much for me wanting to eat them. Kind of like eating a racoon.

Now don't go badmouthing ringtails...

Bear meat is best frozen for a few months and then cut into handy sized blocks for Halloween. Kid's love a 5 pound frozen block of bear meat dropped in their pumpkin!

mmmm seasoned with bar oil