Black Bear Sausage

[Keyman]

The wife and I got done yesterday making sausage from black bear. Took a week with a couple days off in the middle. We shot one and were gifted the meat from 4 other bears. All animals were shot May and early June. Not a bad bear in the bunch. We ended up with 228 pounds of different flavor sausage. I have been buying seasonings from The Sausage Maker. Some flavors were Maple, Italian Sweet, Bratworst, and Chorizo. That last one is our biscuits and gravy special. We pack into the premade plastic tubes. In the past years we always used 50% moose meat, but this year it was 100% bear and moose fat as needed. It is so expensive to get things shopped that we try to use all local resources. I have even made sausage with beaver and moose meat. We have city electricity and many chest freezers. Cost of that power is 90 cents per killowatt. We make our own ham, but no bacon.

[Winger Ed.]

Sounds great.
90 cents a KH? Wow. Ours is 14 cents, and I thought that was high.

[Keyman]

Every thing in Bush Alaska is expensive. The only way to get here is a one hour air plane ride, $225.00 one way. Gas 6.75 gallon, brought by barge in summer, milk $14.00 gallon, $6.50 for 16 oz cottage cheese, $5.50 for 18 eggs. It just goes on and on. Only took me 35 years to get here. Love every minute of it.

[FishHunter357]

Black bear sausage sounds great! That's wild that there were four other people that didn't want their delicious bear meat but glad it worked out for you. I made some jerky with my first bear but I'll definitely have to do sausage for the next one now.