In this post, Cicero claims (and others seem to confirm) that…
I’m wondering about the logics of this. Are the bears bought from hunters? That doesn’t seem like a reliable enough method for commercial production. Do they farm bears?
In this post, Cicero claims (and others seem to confirm) that…
I’m wondering about the logics of this. Are the bears bought from hunters? That doesn’t seem like a reliable enough method for commercial production. Do they farm bears?
Yes, it’s the people’s right to keep and farm bears.
I sooooo wanted to post that. Good one! :thumbs up smilie:
I also believe in the right to arm bears.
But to get back to the OP, they’re are places that buy game meat from hunters and package it for commercial sale.
I don’t have a factual answer, but I would point out that bears are omnivores. If you did farm them, they could be fed a pretty cheap diet.
More likely, though, my guess is that the meat comes from bears shot by sport hunters. I have a friend who went on safari in Africa and has about a dozen heads mounted all over his living room. He shoots the critters. The hunting guide gets them to a taxidermist, and the meat goes to a butcher to be sold in the local area.
I googled “Bear Meat in a Can” and got this. And this. Go figure. Not sure what to make of the Bear Dog Food.
I’ve had Elk before and it tasted like ass. Doubt that I would try bear burgers.
Moderator Note
In the General Questions forum, please hold off on the joke answers until after the question has been addressed factually.
Really? The one time I had elk, it was made into the best chili I’ve ever tasted. And I’ve had venison from lesser cervids plenty of times, and it didn’t taste bad, either.
I’ve only had bear once, and remember liking it, but then, I was a kid at the time, and my appreciation was doubtless at least in part due to the awesomeness of eating actual bear meat.
Bear meat can be okay, depending on what they’ve been feeding on. If they’ve been chowing down on salmon or skunk cabbage, it’s not going to be a pleasant taste. If they’re taken during berry season, different story.
I grew up in Alaska, and ate all sorts of moose and caribou and fish and so on, but I just realized I’ve never eaten bear.
I have no direct experience to add to the mix, but I’ve read many stories from the 1800s taming of the West about how exploration parties had to be darn hungry before they’d stoop to eating bear.
Apparently even those hardy folks thought the taste was a bit much.
We had elk burgers on a trip thru West Virginia at Cabela’s and they stank without adding sauce to them. My son couldn’t even finish his even with sauce. We joked for hours about how the burger must have been made of the butthole of the elk. I could see using them in a chilli but not as steaks.
Maybe I should order me some bear and serve some up on the barbeque now that it’s getting warmer.
I have read that game meats taste like whatever the animal has been eating. If a bear had been eating a lot of fish, the meat will have a fishy taste.
I have had wild venison-once it had a gamy, liverish taste. I have also had farm raised deer-it was delicious. I have also read that the meat of carnivores is usually not too tasty.
I had some bear salami once. It was fine. I think highly spicing and drying meat which is usually considered icky is a good proposition.
I have had excellent Elk steaks at a number of different restaurants in Wyoming and Colorado.
Considering the only bears I’ve ever seen have all been eating garbage at the dump, I doubt any of them would have a great flavor.
I had some canned bear meat, back in the late 50s. I don’t remember it as tasting significantly different from beef.
In the US?
Gotta say the replies in this thread so far are pretty weak as far as General Questions go. Hearsay, opinion, conjecture.
Bears are not farmed in Finland. Wild bears are regularly hunted, that’s where the meat comes from. Finnish bears being apex predators in a modern, Western nation, bear is a rare and expensive meat. Quality restaurants occasionally have bear on the menu, at a high price. Very occasionally bear meat can be found at foodie stores, at around 100 euros / kg.
Bear meat is simply excellent: dark, rich and flavourful, and very high in polyunsaturated fats. There are no dumpster-diving bears in Finland, nor salmon-chowing bears. Finnish bears eat moose, deer, wild berries, roots, honey and (raided) grain. I’d eat bear every week if money wasn’t an issue.
No-one lives off selling canned bear meat. Small-scale canning facilities make a batch of tinned bear when they get it. Recently availability has in fact increased, due to more bears being killed. Everything they churn out gets sold, too.