Ok Guys... you asked for it..
My son and I got a decent young spring bear the other day.
We try to get 3 or so of these every year for bacon burger. Spring bears are a tradition around here, and springtime the bears around here wake up to spring grass, and a skunk cabbage diet. A spring bear in Alaska must be meat salvaged until June, and is excellent table fare. A bunch of you asked for details on how we process our young spring bears so here is my way. Your mileage may vary.
Start off with a good bear and take care of it. Treat it like you would a deer or any other animal you prepare for table fare. Clean kill is a good bear. Get it bled, gutted, rinsed very well, get the hide off and get it cooled quick is always a great start for table fare no matter what your killing for food. Meat Hanging in the spring is always weather dependent here. If the weather co-operates, I hang for a couple days at least and prefer 3 days. My shop stays very cool usually and hovers around mid 40’s early season, but if it starts getting up over 50, I move the process along. I always make a weak dilute of vinegar water to clean the meat of any sort of blood debri or whatever, and bugs don’t like it.
This is how I setup for a bear butcher. I get everything lined out on a super clean counter in the house with lots of workspace, and I only bring in meat quarters at a time so there is plenty of room to work.
Let’s talk about tools for a min. I use the usual knives, cutting boards, bowls, pots, baggies and so forth, but really the most important tool is your grinder. How you take care and prep your grinder will dictate wether you cruise right along or have a very frustrating time of things. The most important part of your grinder is NOT how much horsepower your motor is, but how sharp the knives in your grinder are. If your knives are not sharp, bit of meat and tiny pieces of missed sinew start to build up on the knives and disc and make for a huge mess. Lots of beginners dont realize that these things are easily maintained and sharpened. Here is how I do it...
This is your grinder knife.
This piece sits against the disk with the holes in it. Usually 2 disks come with home type grinders, a course grind and a fine grind. Always start with course grind. I take the knifes and place them flat on a sharpening stone and use a circular motion in the same direction towards the leading edge of the knife flat on the stone...
You can check the knife with your finger and you will know when it it sharp. I also do the same thing to my grinding disc’s. This helps keep them trued up and flat and removes any debri that may have been missed.
When I am done I check my knife and disc together to verify visually that they are fitting together as perfectly as I can possibly get them. What your looking for is visible gaps between the leading edge of the cutting side of the knife, and the disc... if you see a gap, something ain't right and your in for a long day. It should look about like this...
Again, time invested here will save much time and frustration later.
On with the process... I usually start with about 3lbs or so of decent scrap bacon. Usually even I can find some when I go to town or Ketchikan and I try to stock up in the off season just for this. Ends and pieces are what your looking for...
And grind them once through course grind and set them aside in a bowl by themselves... then start cutting up the bear meat in preparation for grinding. An important rule of thumb. Never leave the grinder running between grinding.. cut up a bunch of meat in cubes or small strips all at once, then turn on the grinder and run the pile. If you let it run, small pieces of meat start to heat up with the grinder on long runs and can make things taste funny. You will also get years of service from your grinder instead of 1 or 2 seasons. So cut and stack, turn on the grinder and grind, then shut down. Repeat till finished.. also it seems like I do a better job of trimming meat when I am not feeding the grinder, and that is very important with bear.
Remember, when trimming bear meat, remember it is NOT beef. Only red meat. No sinews, no fat, no junk, no silver skin, nothing but red meat goes in. It’s a lot more work, but the rewards you can taste. Here is an example...
The stuff I am pointing to with my knife does not ever go into a grinder. Not only will it clog after a while, it will flavor the meat. Trim it. I setup with 2 cutting boards and assembly line things... first cutting board is rough trim, second board is final trim in case I missed something the first trim. Sounds like a lot of work, but so is weight sorting, and lubing boolits... be meticulous!!!!
Once I have a almost full bowl, I dump the meat out on a cutting board, and pat it pretty flat. Then I grab a handful of the ground bacon mix and dribble it like flour over the top of the flat meat patty and off it goes back through the grinder again, as this step mixes it for you in a way you will never be able to do by hand mixing...
Just run it through again and place the completed bacon burger into a larger pot as a holding place and go back to cutting, trimming and grinding till you have almost another bowl full.. and repeat. Resist the urge to fill the bowl to the top, as then when you add the bacon, the chance to accidently overflow become greater, and transferring overflow bowls to cutting boards and then storage pot becomes messier with spills..
This is about as full as I let mine get.
After you have ground all that you are gunna do, chances are you will have some ground bacon left over. This is what I do with the left overs.. remember I started with around 3 plus pounds of bacon scrap. This batch of ground meat weighed around 30lbs. That is about 10% bacon scrap. I take all of the ground bear from the storage pot and lay it out on my cutting boards, and spread what is left of the bacon over the top evenly as possible. Like so...
And run it through the course grind again... what comes out is my finished product. I package that up in quart sized freezer ziplock bags at about 25oz a bag, suck the air out of each one, LABEL and DATE the bags and lay them flat in the freezer. They freeze faster flattened out and stack better.
That’s all there is to it..
Enjoy and have a blessed Bear Hunt.
Marko
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Never mind the years of spaghetti, tacos, hamburgers, etc., etc... She can tell when it's hamburger or when it's deer....and she WILL NEVER eat that nasty stuff!
I found a new one from a member here
