Lower mainland butcher/ sausage maker for bear meat

[Leveraction]

you guys know a good butcher/ sausage maker in the lower mainland for bear meat.

What are you guys doing with your bear meat
ground meat, you eating it straight in chilli or spaghetti sauce, making burgers ?
mixing it with other wild meat ??

im going after an eating bear in about a month, just wondering

Lever

[Rob Chipman]

Good looking cuts I cook and eat like I would any other animal.

Tougher cuts and rib meat, etc, I grind into sausage.

I do my own butchering. Where I fall down is smoking hams. I had my first bear done by a pro and I got some great hams from him, and those I miss.

[Noreasny]

I would think it depends on how and what you like to cook would depend on what you do with your bear I make my own sausages, jerky and grind a bunch for burgers and also cut a few roasts for slow cooking

[tigrr]

Most end up costing $9 a pound for sausages. Then you really have to like that butchers product. And hope he doesn't mix your nice young bear in with some old fish eating thing someone else brought in. There is stories of that on here too.
We bought a grinder and 1/2 roasts and half really lean burger. No end of online recipes for bear sausages. 80/20 bear meat pork fat. If you look around this site you will find some incredible sausage recipes. Then you start adding cure and smoking them. You can make a bear steak into a cured ham tasting chop in 24 hours. I am starting small before I cure a whole ham and smoke it.

[whitlers]

I personally don't have any butchers I trust in the LML anymore. My guy quit to make dog food full time. Bonetti's will make sausage sometimes if you bring them clean frozen trim but it depends if they are busy etc.

[caddisguy]

We just grind it all ourselves and use it for anything we would use ground beef (chilli, burgers tacos, burritos, meatballs, hambearger helper, sloppy joes, speghetti sauce, etc) Sometimes we keep some chunks for stir fry, stew, etc, but mostly ground.

Some people take it up a notch with preparing delicious looking roasts and hams... bcsteve posted up a delicious looking smoked ham on the other "bear inspiration" thread.

One of my favorite parts about hunting bears is that for us it's one of the only examples where we consistently save money by hunting. Net gain. Fishing and deer hunting not so much :) (trout dont pay the gas and I'm pretty bad at hunting deer)

I figure if we get say 75-100 lbs of meat and drop it off a butcher and pay just as much or more for it as it would have cost to buy from the grocery store, I'd be rethinking going after bears and probably just buy the equivalent in weight of Jacks Links from 7-11.

Buying an electric grinder that will last many years (ours has ground up 7 bears and trim from 2 deer before even changing the original plate / blade) is fraction of the cost of taking one animal to the butcher.

It doesn't take any skill or knowledge to trim chunks of meat and stuff it into a grinder or even stuff sausages.

Even deer I don't take to a butcher. Separating muscle groups and winging it works good for us. Will it make a decent steak? Nice! No? How about steak bites? Nice! No? Grinder pile it is.

If I ever got a moose though I think I'd drop that one off at the butcher.... probably already tired and don't feel like cutting and grinding for a day or two. Bear and deer we have cut / ground and vaccum packed in 2-3 hours

[MichelD]

Lots of variety in a bear. I save the ribs and saw them into strips for baking in the oven, make roasts out of the big portions off the hinds, rolled roast of the meat filleted off the scapula and stew meat from nice chunks left over from bigger cuts.

I have saved the whole lower back intact for a saddle roast. I also save the shanks as is for pressure cooking for meaty soup or baking in a clay pot as a sort of osso bucco. Every bone is saved and frozen for future soup.

I skin out the paws and my wife makes braised bear paws. Render down the fat though spring bears are lean. Fall bears are better for the fat.

[walks with deer]

My good buddy who recently passed prefered ground bear above all..

[Huntingtyler123]

Country meadows butcher has been good to me. Taken 2 bears there and turned out great to answer your question. I prefer spicy pepperoni and ground.

[jezza]

Opening Day Game Cutting - 604-446-8851

Sumas had him listed as an overflow butcher and I ended up connecting with him; just a really nice guy who does it out of his home, who's a professional butcher by trade. I've had his deer chorizo and it was fantastic. He also sells beef/pork quarters. I'd highly suggest him.

[Rob Chipman]

I skin out the paws and my wife makes braised bear paws.

OK, now that is intriguing...intriguing enough that I'm going to give it a try. Thanks!