Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Food, Cooking, and Game Preparation I have a bear hanging out in the garage....

Neighbor called a few hours ago.... Wanted help with the bear he shot.... He just wanted the skin for a rug..... My wife and I helped get it off.... As a result.....now we have probably 250 pounds of bear hanging up.....

I have never shot or eaten a bear before..... Some people say they love it others hate it.... I understand trichinosis is a concern and that it needs to be cooked to the same internal temperature as pork.....

I also just read that bear doesn't need to hang and age like venison does..... Is this correct?

Suggestions for a first attempt at cooking bear? Thanks.

2ndwind- Try to bone it out and get as much of the fat and gristle off as is humanly possible. The roasts should be treated like beef. Slow cooking seemed to be best for my taste and tenderness choice. I prepare venison and elk toward the rare side but bear I want medium well. BTW it is very good.-Mike

Thanks Mike.... I never tried very hard to find a bear during hunting season (they seem to go out of there way to find me and my camp sites when the season is closed though).... My wife and I think of ourselves as "trophy meat hunters".... I would have felt badly if I shot a bear and then didn't like the meat....

Do you agree that bear meat does not need to be aged like venison does?

"I have a bear in my garage!"

Way cool post!

Several VERY important points... In the freezer bear meat goes BAD at about 6 months. At that point trust me, just toss it!

To prevent it from going bad it can be canned and will keep virtually indefinitely.

Chili verde in huge quantities is a good thing to do with it and then canned. I have done as many as three whole bears at once.

Most strains of Trichina are killed by freezing at 0 for a week. Our local strain is not...

Slow smoked/cooked for pulled bear is outstanding...

Good bear meat is outstanding stuff.

Thanks Art...... Good Lord.... 3 bears worth of chili verde.... IIRC our pressure canner does 8 quarts at a time..... How many times does 8qts divide into 3 bears

Last one was made into burger, breakfast sausage, and pepper sticks.

It's good meat if not too much salmon in the diet - perhaps not your problem. What is the main feed source for bears in your AO? Berries? Acorns? Poodles?

Poodle berries?

Honestly do not remember the numbers... but believe I posted about that one here... Have also done CV with muskox from Brother Dave, moose, caribou, deer, and mountain goat.

When Riley was growing he would come home from school and evaporate a whole quart in a single sitting.

We run two pressure cookers at once and they do two levels of quarts each. It is still a lengthy process. Looking into retort bags for canning moose and caribou meat...

Well, I did have a cat go missing.... I had been thinking it was the coyotes.... But now that the poodle possibility has been raised....

This bear had likely been eating apples and acorns.... It came from a hardwood ridge top in the Blue Ridge Mountains of NC. I'm feeling optimistic.

retort bags?

Like MREs come in... plastic and foil bags designed to handle pressure cooking in. They store much better than cans or jars and may allow more efficient use of the pressure cookers...

Requires a chamber type vacuum sealer to use them.

BREs.... Bears ready to eat.....after just breaking a jar full of olives on the kitchen floor while barefoot I could see BREs really getting ready to take off..

Is it dead already?

Yeah I was certain it wasn't just playing possum after Chris slit the skin up through the testicles..... Discovered the baculum..... Apparently when a male bear gets sexually aroused..... It really does get a boner.....

Here we go.......

Yep

I just tried to order Eileen's Sausage Season online... had some kind of glitch so just sent her an email...

Again a question for you seasoned bear butchers.... Is it correct that aging bear meat (we keep a separate refrigerator running during deer season) is not important?

Don't try to age bear meat, the fat will turn rancid making for a lot of work to make it fit to eat. I speak. from experience I use to love to eat bear,but now can't stand the smell of it. ---Mel

Thanks Mel..... Mrs Wind and I are planning to cut and wrap it this evening then...

Good plan,let us know how it comes out.

2ndwind- Sorry I am getting back so late. I had to watch my favorite football team "tank". I agree with olblue that you don't age it but then I don't age any wild game. If it ends up too tough I make it into sausage, jerky, and burger. I learned about fat on wild game the hard way with some delicious raccoon that a guy had me try. Told me it was roast beef. The next piece I tried had some fat on it and it curled my lips.-Mike

2ndwind, I just wrapped up your copy of Sausage Season to ship on Monday, and have to put in my 2 cents. First? I think sausage is a great place to start with bear meat, since you've never eaten one before. And save the fat. Bear fat is night and day different from deer, elk and antelope fat.
John's 2nd hunting mentor, Ben Burshia didn't hunt bears, but if someone had a bear down, he'd take all the fat they'd give him. Then he'd render it down and he and his wife Agnes would make the flakiest pie crusts you ever tasted. (They were also delicate tasting.) So, first batch of sausage, I'd use bear fat, but only the cleanest whitest fat. If you like that, it'll save you money. You won't have to buy pork fat.
And check out page 32 in Sausage Season for how to figure out the best ratio of lean to fat in sausage. (For your taste buds.) Bears have more fat than deer, elk and antelope, but less than wild pig. So you'll have to mix a little lean meat with fat, and cook it and see how much fat is good for your taste buds. For deer, elk and antelope, I like 2 parts lean to 1 part fat unless I case it. But your bear might need less fat.
Sorry never tried raccoon fat. But I'm guessing it ranks around porcupine fat.

Mrs. Wind here: Thanks for the advice. How long can we keep the meat that has been trimmed in the refrigerator before freezing it?
We were wondering if we could keep some out to try the new sausage recipes or if we need to get it frozen immediately.

Thanks,
Jayne

Where you goin'?

Remember the 6 month limit on keeping bear frozen includes sausage...

Bear does make outstanding sausage.

Vena Angier wrote many times about the same thing.

You know. It's always cool when Mrs. 24HCF steps in for the close.

Nice to meet you Jayne. Glad to know, that you know, you have a bear hanging out in your garage.

I really like bear stew with beef short ribs. As Art suggested, chile verde and colorado are excellent. Made lots of chile colorado into tomales with the last/only bear I have got.

Would not leave in the fridge any longer than I would raw pork. Would get all of it off the bone. Best of luck to the both of you.

Turns out we like it! Just "country fried " some backstrap.... Made gravy and served it over mashed potatoes..... Had been thinking we were going give a fair amount of it away to friends and family..... I just caught Jayne scraping out the last of the gravy and licking it off the serving spoon..... Now thinking the gift bear meat is going to be given in smaller packages....

Art, no worries about all of it being either eaten or canned way before the 6 Month limit ...... IIRC you had posted some "food porn" featuring a pie your Mrs. Made... The crust looked like a pastery work of art.... Has she ever used rendered bear fat in pie crust? Jayne is country enough to know how to make a pie crust from scratch..... Her mom thinks it is nearly sinful to use a store bought pie crust.....

I have a serious love affair with home made pie.....

I know for many folks bears are kind of like "furred seagulls or pigeons". Where I grew up they were not very common at all.... When I was a teenager I read William Falkners story titled "The Bear". I thought that work captured the essences of hunting camp.... Getting out to the wilderness before it was gone.... Boy coming of age in the company of men..... Who were being men.

The bear was an almost mythical animal that made the wilderness wild....

Here is a link to a Cliff Notes kind of summary with a pdf file you can download if you would like to read it.....

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/moses/section5.rhtml

Faulkner has a kind of dense stream of consciousness writing.... Kind of dark too.... But for the most part he wrote in praise of the true and worthy hunter.... He also gave me a sense that I was never anyplace "wild" unless a bear might show up....

Okay, back to trimming and packaging the wild meat.....

She makes a mean pie crust but does not use bear fat...

I have read much of Faulkner... have a book here "Loaded for Bear" which is a large collection of bear hunting stories. It is worth looking for. There is a Faulkner story in it, too.

Bear meat makes excellent pepperoni sticks. That's about the only way I can stomach bear meat.

I guess I'm doing something wrong!

We have just a bit of sausage left in the freezer from 'bender jr's purple-bandana bear last Aug. It's a good as ever.

That has never happened with the bears we have had... Can't tell you what the difference would be...

Like any fresh meat, bear can be in the fridge 2-3 days. But you've got to start counting 'fridge days' from the day the bear was shot. So, not knowing how long it will take Sausage Season to get to you, I'd freeze it all. It's always better to grind partially frozen meat anyway. It saves moisture and is actually easier to handle.

The good news is it sounds like you've already tasted it, and liked it, so that's good. Cause I forgot to mention what a bear tastes like has a lot to do with what he's eating. Right now in Mt, our rifle season is open, and I'd bet every bear in the woods is now feasting on gut piles which is not a good thing for flavor. But I'm guessing your season hadn't started and he was still eating on grass and berries.

Six months is a good rule of thumb, especially with something that has fat like sausage. But what kind of freezer do you have? Upright freezers probably allow even less time, especially if you're in and out of them a lot.
Chest freezers are another story. Years ago I did a test. I put a freezer thermometer in our chest freezer and let it sit closed up for 20 minutes. Then I opened the door--it was at the optimum -5 F degrees--and waited until the temp started to rise. Twenty minutes later, even our Lab was bored of watching the meat. The thermometer never budged.
Took the same thermometer and put it in the upright. Temp started dropping as soon as I opened the door. And that's what causes freezer burn and fat to go bad in the freezer--inconstant temps.

So, about 6 months is a general rule. But the more surface area (like ground meat would have) the less time; in an upright freezer, less time.

Tightly double wrapped, in a chest freezer at -5, a little more time. Vacuum sealed in something like a Food Saver, in a chest freezer, you could push it more. I wouldn't throw out any bear if it's been in a good chest freezer, well wrapped for more than 6 months. But it doesn't sound like this bear will last that long.

That's a great gift. Usually gifted game meat isn't that great.

We are just finishing trimming and wraping the meat now..... The timer on the electric pressure cooker (which we love.... So easy) says it is 33 minutes away from having a batch of bear stew ready.....

Jayne just announced that she is not up for trimming the bear fat.... I have kind of a gimmpy back so sitting at the counter doing the final cuts is something that wears me out fast..... She has probably done 75% of the final trimming.... I owe her big time..... I'll work on the fat trimming tomorrow..... Thinking I will need to remove all the crud and bits of meat scraps and work with only the whitest pure fat???

We figured on making small sausage test batches using the frozen meat..... Not sure about the possibility of later making a bigger batch to pressure can..... IIRC sage is not a herb that stores well canned???

I expect that we will have all the venison we could want this year..... I have made friends with some younger hunters over the past few years and have their cell phones on speed dial.... Jayne and I never had any kids so having young friends to "fetch" deer for us is a huge plus.

Our friend Chris (the proud bear slayer) is married to a very nice woman but she just will not cook or eat game meat..... Chris mostly just makes jerky.... And gives the rest away..... After trying some of the sasuage we have made in the past he got pretty excited about eating that.....

We had been using a juicer that had an attachment which would grind meat, but not very fast.... We ended up loosing a part for it and could not get a replacement for it...

I had been reading reviews on the Cabales grinders.... I was hesitant to spend 350.00 on one when I was not sure how many more deer I was going to be up for shooting do to some back and knee problems..... Hearing this Chris swore he would keep bringing me deer quarters for the next 20 years or so

We love the new grinder..... Might buy a sasuage stuffer because in is kind of a pain to fill the casings straight from the grinder.....

Thanks very much to all who have posted on this thread..... I have been enjoying posting in a section of the campfire that does not contain any mention of politics or other news related events..... Somebody send me a text message if the ballon goes up.... Otherwise I'm going to make an effort to focus on life's simple
pleasures....

Off to walk the English Setter with Jayne before the sunset.....

Are you planning to render the bear fat?

As to sausage, we make bulk and package it like burger meat, and when ready to have it with breakfast, we just squeeze patty.

Yep, Jayne has to go back to work tomorrow..... The rendering is on my "to do list"..... Not sure if I can dig out a camp stove that still has good seals ..... Don't want to stink up the house.....have read that it can produce an unpleasant odor....

Art, I found "Loaded For Bear".... Looks like it was recently published..... Only 3.99 for the download to my Kindle...... Dear Lord I wish I had bought stock in Amazon when they first came out with book downloads.... Audible to.... It's like crack cocaine for readers

Another observation from first time bear processors.... A bear's skeletal system is eerily similar to a human skeleton.... Jayne's day job is as a family physician so she was happy to show me the bear's sacroiliac joints so I could better understand where my own parts have been seizing up. I have now seen an up close view of a bear larynx....where the growls come from too. If I am called on to intubate a bear, I know what to look for.....

The bear stew turned out well.... The meat is very mild tasting.... We will be looking for ways to spice it up.... I understand why chili and sausage recipes are popular..... I am thinking about using it in tacos.... burritos.... Hot and spicy is a good thing with us.... Other suggestions?

If you have access to a smoker, salt cure and smoke some, then use it in place of a ham hock. White beans, pink beans, lentils, red beans and rice. Would bet some spicy sausage in a gumbo or jambalaya would be great too. Cajun, Mexican, Thai, anything spicy.

Experiment, you can't really go wrong and it may make you try something you don't normally make.

I ate some bear one time that had been corned , tasted just like corned beef to me.

Mike

I have been told, bear lard makes the best pie crust.

Was it killed over there next to your place?

Yes probably less that 2 miles.... Chris is the son-in-law of a local Minister..... As a result he gets permission to hunt land little old ladies own that NOBOBY else gets to hunt.... He shot a big 10 point last year on a property adjoining my land .....

I have to say that I admire the boy's initiative in working that angle for all it is worth though....

http://furfishgame.com/store/thebookmarket.html

Just finished the first chapter of Loaded For Bear...... The style and tone reminded me of a series of outdoor stories from the depression era up through the end of WW II that Fur Fish And Game had started republishing. The Adventures of Lew and Charlie by Mauries Decker.... When I was a kid I started reading those stories.....and then Kept buying FFG.... Had zero interest in the trapping focus much of the magazine had but FFG has exclusive rights to the series....

FFG has just released a collection of the earliest "Adventures of Lew and Charlie".... Decker's work isn't "Important literature" along the lines of Faulkner or Hemmingway but it sure is fun hook and bullet adventure writing from a earller era....

I know, totally not cooking related.... But I was so pleased to discover that FFG finally released some of this kind of pulpy but fun stuff in book form that I just thought I'd share

Please report on the rendering. I've not done that as spring bears are pretty lean.

Will do..... I woke up this morning to find the kitchen counter covered in fresh freezer paper with the knives and cutting board set out..... I took that as a reminder of my current "Honey do" list.....

Got about 2/3 of a small deer that has been aging... it needs to be cut and wrapped as well..... This is going to be a second pot of coffee day..... Think I will pick out an Audible novel to listen to..... The final deboning trim and wrap process take us the longest.... But I am also sure our meat turns out better that most venison butchers process for a fee.....

2ndwind: I broke down and bought a caser this year, one of the hand crank 20 pound capacity ones from Lem. It makes stuffing really easy, and is a lot easier to clean up after than a grinder.
But as someone pointed out, you don't need to case sausage to enjoy it. We've eaten a lot of Brat patties....they taste just as good as a cased sausage.

Need one more thing to do with sausage? We made a pot of split pea soup and browned some Kitchen Kounter Kielbasa (page 76 in Sausage Season) to flavor it up. (1 pound bag of dry split peas and about 6-7 cups water in a crock pot; then add one onion browned with 2 pounds of sausage; let it cook 2 hours on high to get the temp up to a safe level, then 3-4 hours until the peas are mushy.)It was wonderful, a real treat to come home to after hunting.

Good to see Jayne about has you trained

Yeah she does..... Think I told you about our first date when she looked me straight in the eye and said, "I'm a doctor..... I know how to help people and I know how to really hurt them too".... Next Month will be 16 years that we have been married ...... Apparently I have managed passing grades so far....

I think I also told you about asking her to marry me only a few Months before deer season..... After a long pause ( had me sweating buckets...) she said yes and then wanted to know when..... I started out with, "Well deer season is coming up I would want to wait until after that before going away on a honeymoon......

When she told me she had taken the hunters safety class as a school activity when she was 14..... And knew where the paper was.... that she would like to start hunting too, I just figured it was the love talking..... She is a big animal lover.... I Never thought she would start shooting critters..... Apparently my venison cooking had won her over though.....

I took her up on the wedding sooner rather that post deer season offer. When a deer came out into a field I told her not to shoot it if it was going to make her feel bad..... Her reply was, "Ha.... It's lasagna!" Southern women.... They are fun . I think she has shot at least one deer every year since.

When she has time she is a really good cook too.... Maybe after all these years that she has been reading the campfire and keeping up with PMs ( I had to ask Les to not send anymore naked mountain woman pictures).... She will decide to get her own screen name and start posting here in the cooking section..... hint.....

You definitely won the wife lottery with Jayne.

Yeah, that is what my Ham Radio buddies think too.... There are not a bunch of couples that both get licensed ..... We passed the Tech and General class tests at the same time..... We had bought the study guide for the Extra Class license..... The question pool was expiring at the end of last June.... She thought we could learn it in time (Maybe 10% of Hams ever get the Extra Class) She passed pretty much with flying colors and I missed a passing score by one..... As a result she can now pass me as third party traffic in the highly desirable extra class portion of the bands...... Which means that I have been made sport of by other Hams literally around the World.....

In other news after I told her that you were posting on this thread she got a big smile..... For some strange reason she seems to like you.... She had registered for a screen name years ago.... Can't remember what it was though.... Thinks it might have had the "Wind" family worked in some how.... So we will either find that one or she will reregister..... You are just that charming of a guy HBB....

Back to cooking.... Made some progress trimming the fat today..... Took a break and when I came back the fat had warmed .... No way to separate the meat and grunge from the good stuff unless it's cold..... Think I will put the untrimmed stuff in the freezer for a bit tomorrow .... Guessing I have an easy 15 pounds that still needs trimming..... I am going to put in a request for a blueberry pie first.... Kind of in honor to the bear....

John's 2nd hunting mentor, Ben Burshia didn't hunt bears, but if someone had a bear down, he'd take all the fat they'd give him. Then he'd render it down and he and his wife Agnes would make the flakiest pie crusts you ever tasted. (They were also delicate tasting.) I have heard from several people that homemade donuts made with bear fat are the best ever

I finished up trimming all the meat and gunk away from the best looking fat.... May have been overly trim happy..... Only about 1/2 of a gallon sized zip lock bag of the best looking fat left to render..... Jayne will be off from work from next Wednesday through the weekend..... Will report the results on the blueberry pie.... Maybe a sweet potato pie too.... All in the name of cullinary research.....

I have had Bear meat prepared only one way. I took a 250lb bear that had a main diet of acorns and grasses to my butcher and had him turn it all into hard salami mixed with pork fat. My 8yr old son devoured 10lbs of it with cheese and crackers. much better than what is sold in the stores today.

How much salami did you get in total?

Atta boy!

i have a friend that loves bear meat. he cooks roast in a slower cooker with 1lb of beef burger,then adds a big can of bushes baked beans an hour before serving. it ain't bad.younger the bear the better eating.

Need a pie update!

Yeah Man!

I gave up trying to find the old camping stove.... Was concerned about stinking up the house during the rendering process..... Turns out that with this bear it is not a problem....I can smell it but it is a "gee that makes me hungry" smell

.. We started out with maybe a 1/4 inch of water on the bottom of a heavy pot...... Hours ago..... Been 4 or 5 hours now on low heat.... It is maybe 1/2 liquid now..... I figured with that much of it in liquid form it was time to bump up the heat..... I was told to keep my mitts off the control knob..... Apparently it is suppost to take a long time.....

Picked up some lemoms to add to the frozen blueberrys...... Also grabbed a can of pumpkin for pie test number two.....

Got my copy of Sasuage Season..... Eileen calls for way more pork trimmings per pound of game meat that I have used before..... We will follow her lead on the test batches though..... Bear sweet Italian will be first up..... Stocked up on fresh spices today as well..... No luck finding sasuage casings locally so looks like I need to find some online.....

I tend to over cook sasuage patties due to the pork..... With cased sasuage it is easy to use a thermometer and stop at 160 degrees..... Looks like the good grade of sasuage stuffer is 400.00 or so..... That isn't happening this year..... We will work on our stuffing straight from the grinder skills this season.

For bulk sausage (I haven't produced links) I believe the fat carries the flavor in sausage and it should be 35% to 50% fat; FWIW.

But damn it 2W, lets get some pie pics here!!

I had always used about 25% Boston butt with sausage..... Had never heard about using pork jowls before.... Way more fat vs meat in those trimmings..... Also WAY less expensive to purchase..... (The difference in pork costs will likely fully pay for Eileen's book somewhere between 75 to 100 pounds of game sausage)....

The bad news is that if we discover that we like these recipes WAY better than what we have been making for years...... I'll be needing to start on cholesterol medication......

I was surprised by amount of cracklings left over..... After straining we ended up with 2 pint jars of rendered fat..... Left them loosely covered on the counter over night and stuck them in the refrigerator this AM.....

I had some sort of fatal error trying to set up a Photo Bucket account years ago.... Someone got a link to the equivalent of "An Idiots Guide To Posting Pictures On The Internet"?

This one?

https://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbth...96239/How_to_post_your_photos#Post696239

A local grocery has bags of pork fat for sale. That's what I get when making sausage and then calculate % based on final weight of product. FWIW.

I've used the cracklings to add to ground antelope meatloaf. It was delicious. It is also good on salads, just don't tell your cardiologist! Also heated up with lime, salt, and hot sauce as a snack.

Made the first batch of Bear Italian sasuage..... Was real hard to stop frying up test patties so there would be some left to age/blend flavors.... Eileen's book reminds me of some of the "How to bake a truly great loaf of bread" cook books.... There are some extra steps..... But the out come is so worth it.....

Pressure cooked another bear roast..... This time with beef broth, cabbage and apples.... Good stuff.... We had thawed more bear than we ended up using for the sasuage..... Thinking we can now freeze some of these left overs...... Have to save room to eat the properly aged sasuage tomorrow.....

Jayne has come down with a cold so the pie tests may take a few more days......

you need atleast 20-25% fat to make good sausage. you are right that the fat carries the flavor but 35-50% is a bit much. a patty will shrink to half it sze when fried with that much fat. cut your meat into 1in chunks and season before grinding to really even out the flavor.

50% is on the high side, but is certainly not "excessive", IMO.

Our target is usually ~35%, but it depends on how much pork fat we are able to get. It's just how we like it.

As a wise man once said, nobody has ever said it sucks.

The "best" amount of fat depends on several things, including whether the sausage is cased or not, the other meat involved, and cooking method. Anybody who says X amount of fat for EVERY kind of sausage hasn't experimented much.

What do they get for pork fat? I can buy a whole shoulder at Costco for less than $2 a pound and a 15# shoulder makes a decent batch size when mixed with about 25# of ground moose or 'bou. And the fat cut is way lower than your numbers...

Sent a little moose sausage to a certain sports optics guy and told him there was pork in the breakfast sausage (bulk) and he said, "Hey you're cheating!"

Don't remember what I paid, but I buy pork fat for sausage and beef fat for burger. When I make game sausage, I only add fat to the ground critter, never any other meat. I feel I have better control over the final product that way. I've made sausage that didn't have 'enough' fat and it didn't seem like sausage to me.

Maybe that's wrong but that's how it's done at Casa Ironbender.

We don't have a stuffer, so we only make bulk or 'country' sausage. We have a target, but every batch is different.

Agree that you do should NOT age bear (or pig). Bear meat is very similar to pork, so any recipe for pork works well with bear. Crock pot chili verde is mucho deliciouso!

I just love the title of this thread...

This is decent if you like pozole http://wp.me/p3bCKM-4s