Quote Originally Posted by RezDog View Post
I must say though, as I am not much of a fan of bear meat, I don’t bother hunting them. There are those that think it’s the best. Both bear and sea lion are all in the preparation. It’s either delicious or terrible.
Too true. We find the best way to prepare bear is to grind it into burger. It makes great burger for spaghetti, lasagna, tacos and whatever else you would use burger for (including hamburgers). It is easy to control the fat ratio that way as well. When ground up like that, we have never had a single complaint. Most people can't tell the difference between it and beef. This bear gave us about 90 pounds of meat.

For deer we turn the back straps and tenderloins into steaks. The rear haunches becomes a mixture of stew meat and sliced meat for things like jerky and fajitas. The rest of it is mixed with bear fat and ground into sausage.

The left over bear fat is rendered down into lard and canned. The deer fat gets rendered down into tallow for soap making. If I can talk my wife into it, we will sometimes take the large leg bones and make bone broth. The hides typically get donated to someone who can tan them. Although for a while there it was hard to find someone who wanted them.