grizzly bear, why is it?

[Lloyd Smale]

that you don't hear of people eating them. Is it the parasites? I watch one of those Alaskan shows the other night and a guy shot one trying to get at his cattle heard. He went through all the bother of skinning it and took only a roast sized piece of meat and left the carcass and the hide to the scavengers. I guess I thought if one roast is good enough for you to eat why not take all the meat home. The family ate that chunk of meat in a stew for thanksgiving dinner.

[44man]

Sounds like waste to me. I love black bear meat and I am sure Eskimo's have been eating Polar bear forever (Except the liver-toxic, vitamin A over load or something.)
Bear meat just has to be cooked real good, like pork used to need it.

[Wolfer]

I have no personal experience with grizzly bear. From what I've read it depends on what they've been eating.
If they have been eating like a herbivore the meat is edible. If they've been eating like a predator then not so much.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Possibly, although they say lion is good eating. Maybe it is just that a lot fewer of them get shot.

I'd want to stew any bear meat, and stew it carefully. In 1896 a Norwegian Professor Andre tried fly over the North Pole by balloon. You can see him, miraculously preserved in Santa Claus's secret kingdom, in the Beau Bridges movie "Flight of the Reindeer". If you shed ballast every nightfall to compensate for contraction of the gas, and shed gas every morning to do the opposite, you run out of something. So he used dragchains on the ice, but they were seen to fall off, and they were never seen again until thirty years later, when an expedition to rescue General Umberto Nobile after his airship crash found the remains of a camp and partial skeletons.

The men had both eaten and been eaten by polar bears, but left an unsolved mystery. They had guns, a tent, food, a stove and oil fuel. They were ready for the bears, and cold and hunger didn't weaken them. Only in the 1970s a museum found the trichinosis parasite in a piece of bearskin found with the human bones. It doesn't usually kill you, but it weakens you and erodes your judgement, and polar bears are one of the things you can't have afford to have eroded judgement about.

[armexman]

Mr. in Scotland,
Thanks for that response; it will lead me to do some internet research this weekend. Your response brought up facts, information and names I have never heard of in my short 54 years on God's green and blue earth.
Muchas Gracias. Off to the magical world of the internet (where no lies exist)

[dk17hmr]

Cameron Hanes recently shot a couple grizzly bears and butchered them.....documented on his YouTube channel.

I would at least try a steak and probably make sausage if I shot a grizzly.

[grizz41]

That family doesn't normally waste anything. I'll ask that savage the next time I run across him! Alaska D F&G says brown & grizzly should be same as black bear depending on what they've been eating. I haven't had the chance to chew on one yet. I love eatin blueberry bear that's got purple innards from eatin so many berries. Know of 2 "old timers" that said grizz was ok but not their first choice! F&G says excess vitamin E is the problem with bear liver. Hope this helps.

[Schrag4]

One organism's trash is another organism's treasure. I always get a kick out of the idea that an animal that is killed but not harvested for meat is "wasted." There is a long line of scavengers hoping for a chance at that meat - none of it is truly wasted. I DO understand that the meat could have value to the hunter if only he or she realized it, though.

Disclaimer: I'm not a hunter. The position I take is merely a response to the PETA types who would see one type of creature suffer so that another might not have to.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Well, yes. Even bacteria are God's little children, and those opposed to hunting disinfect more of them in a moment than we would in a lifetime's hunting. Animals are a whole lot closer to bacteria than to us, when it comes to thinking "Oh God, I'm going to die!"

[quilbilly]

My experience is with black bear only but I suspect grizzlies are similar. If the black bears have been mostly eating veggies, berries, bugs, small game and occasionally a fawn, they are great eating. I especially like fennel, black pepper, and sea salt rubbed rump roasts cooked in a microwave. If they have been eating a lot of salmon carcasses or fish in general, they taste horrible IMHO. If the black bear has been eating away from local rivers, the meat also makes primo breakfast sausage, bratwurst, and polish sausage.

[w5pv]

I have eaten black bear once and would never shoot one for table fare.The one I ate on was tough,and tasted like rancid pork to me.I would have to be pretty hungry to try it again.

[GabbyM]

Bear meat strait up pretty much taste like cardboard. That's no excuse not to use it. Get some pork fat from the butcher shop to blend in along with other tricks I forget. Most wild game you need to trim off the fat then just toss that. Like Illinois corn fed deer. Pork fat is good in the sausage grinder but just don't tell the women you tossed in a few raccoons.

Those TV shows running on the Stata light are IMHO mostly anti "we have a right to live free" BS.
Surprise it's TV. They depict people who live outside of Obamas control as idiots. We musty be idiots since we do not agree with them.

[Lloyd Smale]

Lots of guys I know would trade you a nice fat doe for a bear anyday. Me im kind of in the middle. Fried in a pan for breakfast it tastes kind of like tasteless venison for lack of better words. Roasts are good if seasoned well and trimmed well. Any fat and you can have it. It makes good burger mixed with beef fat. Closer to beef burger then about any other meat. Its great in sausage but then you could grind a dog or cat up and make sausage and it would taste the same.

[pls1911]

The only bear I've ever had was canned by a New Mexico subsistence hunter Northeast of Santa Fe.
She relished the stuff, but it seemed more like road kill to me, which in fact it may have been.
I like to watch the bears and will leave 'em alone unless they become destructive, and then there are alternative methods to try before I call the canner lady.

[mart]

Alaska F&G does not require the salvage of brown bear meat except in subsistence hunts. In most cases brown bears are pretty rank, especially fall bears. I've not been around a spring brown bear so cannot comment on it but have been told it can be good depending on their diet. I am quite fond of spring black bear. Everyone I've had has been excellent. However a fall black bear from near a salmon stream will most likely be inedible. As was mentioned before no carcass goes to waste. Carrion feeders, both avian and mammalian make short work of any carcass.

I've been berated for my stance on not harvesting bear carcasses. Our law allows for us to leave a brown bear carcass in the field. It also allows for leaving fall black bears as well. I have no problem with this. Some like to claim the moral high ground with the statement they won't shoot something they won't eat. That's fine but F&G depends on hunters to harvest bears in Alaska to meet their management objectives. In the short 13 years I've been living in Alaska, I've seen the brown bear seasons and regulations relaxed considerably in several units. Some are allowing baiting and one brown bear per year. It used to be one bear every four years in most units. Bear numbers are high in many units. Black bear hunters may harvest 3 bears a year in nearly every unit in the state.

To answer the OP's question, most brown bears are nearly or completely inedible because of their dietary indiscretions.

[Lonegun1894]

We don't have bears around here, even though black bears are supposedly moving my way slowly, but y'all have me curious to try both brown and black bear meat. I keep hearing so many different things that it has me wondering if maybe it's a personal preference thing, flavor, or maybe even as simple as some people can cook it and others can't.

[outdoorfan]

We don't have bears around here, even though black bears are supposedly moving my way slowly, but y'all have me curious to try both brown and black bear meat. I keep hearing so many different things that it has me wondering if maybe it's a personal preference thing, flavor, or maybe even as simple as some people can cook it and others can't.

As to your comment about how one cooks the meat, the first black bear meat I had was as good or better than any beef roast I've ever sank my teeth into. My friend's mom cooked it. When I tried MY hand at cooking/roasting the bear meat, it was hardly edible.

[GunnyJohn]

I like bear meat. But it is true that it depends on what they have been eating. I got one a few years ago that had been feeding mostly on fruit from old homestead orchards, sweet and delicious. On the other hand, a cousin got one on the coast, couldn't get past the smell. My grandmother rendered the fat for baking grease. She swore it made the best pie crust.

[rintinglen]

I totally agree with w5pv. Bear meat, at least the black bear I ate part of, is pretty nasty stuff. Rancid pork was exactly how I would describe it.

[BwBrown]

From my vast experience involving two black bear I would suggest this: bear - in my experience black bear - is pretty much dependent on how it is taken care of and processed. I have seen deer and bear hauled around for days for photos and bragging.

Like any game, a harvested bear must be eviscerated, skinned, cooled, fat cut off and treated in the same clean, timely manner as the prime rib beef you buy in the market. Anything short of that quality care will degrade the meat. Understandably, conditions in the field may make such care difficult. which may explain why some would leave behind a whole carcass, or only harvest one roast.

I also respect the judgement of others, especially when I'm not in their shoes. I have twice shot deer which were inedible due to previous injuries - in PA such an animal can be turned in allowing a hunter to continue the hunt.

Bottom line: both my bear were and are delicious - thanks to good recipes and a great cook.