Anyone know of a shop that offers bear processing?
black bear… specifically.
'tis the season.
Your local meat market doesent?
Nope.
deer, but not bear.
how does bear taste?
I’ve actually heard a lot of good things about the taste and texture.
^
kinda greasy too.
I had a bear burger before, it was similar to a beef burger with a different after taste, I don’t know if gamey is the right word to describe it though.
Less gamey than venison.
I have bear sausage in the freezer, had bear lasagna last weekend. It is all in who processes it… Try to get a sample or something from whoever you go to because I’ve had really bad meat before…
The guy who did all of the bear that I’ve been eating doesn’t really do it, so I can’t help you. Sorry.
I don’t see why any place that does deer couldn’t do bear. Jack where are you getting the bear meat? Someone selling it? Bear tastes awesome.
Gamey and stringy because of their activity level. I’ve also been told it’s a bit like garbage because they are scavengers, when the bear is processed there is a foul odor emitted from the stomach which is just rotting leftovers from whatever they find.
This
It all depends on age, sex, and mostly their diet. Whatever their diet has been will depend on how well they taste. If they’re eating baby poop diapers out of dumpsters (which I’ve seen), they’ll taste like shit.
As with a lot of game meat, you have to cook it thoroughly to kill off any trichinella. so no rare bear steaks!
i was told once that the best way to prepare bear meat was to gut it, stuff the carcass with horse shit, cook it over an open flame for 8 hours, empty out the carcass, throw it away and eat the horse shit… but that is just what i was told
They even have Lion! 
JT’s neighbor got one in Canada. That sausage was sketchy. My neighbor from Akron got a monster in Maine and it tastes great. I still have some sausage from my neighbor in the freezer. If you want to try it, tell Maria to cook it and we can share. Haha.
There’s supposedly high black bear concentrations near us (akron) and to the east according to DECs reports.
We’ll see how it goes.
We were talking to our neighboring property owner in Bolivar ad bear counts are way up down there.
Good Luck man!
Taste all depends on what they eat. Suburban bears eat garbage - bear who live rural (generally) are going to be much better tasting. My dad shot a 450+ pounder out in the franklinville area a few years back, he was pretty good! Only downside is that there is a risk of parasite, so you have to cook bear meat properly, or go through very specific freezing temps/time in order to kill the parasites.
I would imagine any deer processor would probably do it. Personally, I do my own processing, so I’ve never looked.
I had venison and I thought it was the best thing in the world-WAY better then a beef steak. Maybe it is because I HATE grizzle that I loved the venison so much, I don’t know. Also, when someone says that it is “gamey”, just what does that mean? Does gamey mean chewey or low flavor?
Gamey is… hard to describe. It’s a taste thing… .not exactly an aftertaste but kind of a ‘background taste’.
I agree on the venison. When I hear gamey I think more of an iron like taste. Iron-y if you will. Usually game animals have less fat in their developed muscle tissue because they are on the run constantly unlike corn fed beef which most often is penned up.