From what I've been reading and if I understand it correctly only the hide and skull are taken.

Why doesn't or does anyone eat the meat? Can the fat be rendered like black bear?

Bill

It depends on the bear and his/her habits. If the bear has been taught to scavenge and hang out for handouts, then they will eat most anything. Most of the time, the big boys are carrion eaters which are targets of opportunity. If you can get a mature bear that has just been into the grass and berry stage, the meat can be eaten, otherwise, leave the meat for the other carrion eaters.

Mr Bill

Yes?

A Native guide friend of mine in Iliamna, saves the fat to make a sort of dip for dried salmon. They render it down to a sort of paste. Yuk I have never tried it.
He also saves the feet to make a stew of sort. He sweares it is great. Yuk again.
I have never tried it either. After skinning countless Browns I am not interested in any of it. Maddog

mr bill I have only tried it once and that was a very old lean and poor condition bear from a salmon stream. It was so tough one really couldn't eat it but I remember it was strong meat. But then I never met an old tough moose caribou mountain or deer that i cared for either. The Thlinget Indians where I grew up in the Haines, Klukwan Area preferred strong meat and loved brown bear. at least the people older than I (65) that are now 70 or more. They hunted them pretty hard for food. mostly they hunted them in the old native way which they considered the safest way, 3 to4 guys ambushing them on trails and salmon spawning streams, at can't miss ranges of 0 to 6 feet. White adesive tape on the barrel to get a good sight picture in the dark. They used spears before they got rifles, two or three stout barbed spears through the ribcage and the bear didn't thrash around too much in the alder jungle. Escape routes were well laid out. Blaze away, roll over backwards and get the hell ota there, I was told. The natives from SE Alaska to the Alaska Peninsula and down the Siberian Coast as far as Northern Japan hunted this way I find, in reading old Ethnological Accounts. For food and bear blankets, of course. Walex

PS Mr. Bill, My old 2nd hand computer is giving me trouble. I didn't make it real clear that those old guys hunted Brown bear in the blackest part of the night. Old Robert Zuboff, who I knew when he was elderly, in Angoon, was the last to have hunted with regularly with the spear, as far as I've been able to find out. WALEX

Thanks 475guy, Maddog and Walex.
I would think the tenderloins aught be good if nothing else. Would strong meat would make good sausage or salami?
I presume the inland and mountain Griz would be more prone to graze on berries and grass than the coastal browns.
The dried fish with rendered fat sounds very interesting. I'd like to try it. (Calamari, raw oysters and clams probably wouldn't look appealing to someone that hasn't tried them either. Yum!)
Many years ago I read an article about someone that went hunting with a native guide, I don't recall if it was for caribou or musk ox, but the guide ate the fat from behind the eyes. He said it was their equivalent to our candy. I've been curious since what that's like too. (The hunter/author wouldn't try it.)
Out of respect I would like to consume, use or give away as much of such majestic animals as I could.
When I save up enough money I'll be up to find out for myself.
Thanks again.
Bill

They take only the hide and head on the coastal Brown Bears because they feed on fish, dead or alive, in the late summer and fall. Imagine a barrel of dead fish, let it set in the sun for two weeks, then roll around in the result. That is what they smell like and taste like. Now if that were all you had to eat, what do you say. ---- The Aleuts where I hunted on the peninsula thought the Bears were reincarnated, that if you ate the meat, you might kill the soul of your deceased grandfather. It was strictly taboo to eat any of the flesh. The carcass was left and other bears would eat it, then the soul would perpetuate itself in the "Devouror", if that is a word. They also said the natives were a part of the food chain, but white man was not, therefore he interupted the chain when he took meat out. Maybe those two idiots that were eaten a few weeks ago would make them a part of the chain. I hunted near Cold Bay. I have a pair of nylon hunting pants that have been washed twenty times over, yet I can wear them and every dog in town does back flips when I pass. ----- As someone else said maybe the mountain Bears are different, but where I was, you wouldn't even think about eating the flesh. Good shooting.

[ 11-01-2003, 17:06: Message edited by: phurley ]

I have been told that the meat of a bear that eats mostly fish is not good to eat, but that the beat meat of an interior grizzly is good. My brother and I were in Alaska the same time but in different camps. The people in his camp ate the meat of a grizzly bear one of the hunters killed. He said it was some of the best meat any of them had ever eaten. I have eaten the meat of several different black bears, including two on my last Idaho Bear hunt [Sept 2003] and it was very good.

Walex,

I enjoyed reading your comments on "the old ways" . In the blackest of night too! With no doctors or hospital to head for if things went haywire.

-Dan

[ 11-04-2003, 08:05: Message edited by: Nevada Dan ]

Nevada Dan
I've got to make a point of asking my Native friends more detail about the night hunting operation, like what they did when things didn't go according to plan A, and did they have a plan B to fall back on. I have to do it soon as I see that another of the old time bear hunters, Albert Paddy, has died in Klukwan, at age 80, this last week. I should have got all the details down a long time ago, but having grown up there all these highly unusual things were just everyday stuff, and I never really gave it much thought how interesting it may be for people from other places. Like the "Valley of the Eagles" on the Chilkat river, between Haines and Klukwan, seeing 4 to 5000 eagles in one spot was just normal stuff. Walex