MeatEater S1-E02: The Sweetest Meat: Alaskan Black Bear

on this hunt i'm headed to the chugach range in south central alaska in pursuit of black bear this rugged country won't give you much so when you get your chance you got to be ready to drop the hammer man what a day i'm stephen ranella to me hunting isn't only about the pursuit of an [Music] it's animal who we are and what we're made of it's about sustenance it's survival it's about connecting to the land it's about the purity of the challenge it's about life in each and every one of us there's a primal instinct to hunt and consume i live to hunt and hunt to live i am late september south central alaska i'm east of anchorage near the matanuska glacier getting ready to head up into the high country in search of black bears got a few days to spend up here the hills right now are loaded with blueberries and my thinking is there's gonna be black bears feeding on berries and putting on a big old layer of blueberry flavored fat what i gotta do to get into a good area that people don't go to i'm gonna go down to the matineusco cross that in my pack rat then i'm going to bushwhack up a tributary stream until i start getting above treeline and then i'll shoot off on some different ridges and start glassing for bears i think there's a very strong possibility we're gonna wind up running into some big fat black bears hunting in alaska is different than anything you're going to encounter in lower 48. for starters everything is bigger out here and nothing is a short walk away [Music] a bear's year around here is going to look kind of like this he's going to come out of hibernation late april early may mid-may he's going to emerge in a snowy world because he's going to be dending you know four five six thousand feet above sea level he'll come down to valley floors like this feeding on emerging vegetation [Music] having not eaten for six seven months he'll be on the lookout big time for carcasses that might even got killed over the winter as that time of year winds down and they'll start feeding on berries the berries ripen up elevation so right around now we might find them at some of the highest elevations they'll be at all year that's black bear i'm sure see his blueberries frozen in there what he's doing down here i don't know see something's rubbing this tree right there oh yeah look at this [Applause] it's grizzly that's not who we're after this grizzy bear so you rub this whole thing up just scratching [Music] [Applause] a big old grizzy track you notice this girly just one of the size and two see how his fingernails are way the hell out the tip of his claw inch and a half from the end of his toe closet disembowel you there's always the added thing that it grizzy bear will shred you to pieces right now i'm eyeballing a valley and there's a potential route up out of the timber would be to catch this next tributary [ __ ] camp down here just buzz up there for the day glass it out plan on coming back down at dark [Music] now i'm looking up into looking up into good-looking bear country now you see all that rough colored blueberry up there if they're up here that's gonna be what they're on oh oh yeah plain as day up there man what in the world these things do up that high look at that that's a nice fat bear up there this plane is day i want to very carefully based on the topography mark the location of that bear knowing that i might not see it again for two or three hours or i might not ever see it again and i need to follow up the canyon and when i get to a point where i feel like i may be even with the bear or hopefully a little bit downwind of the bear then i can start working my way out of the canyon and going up and try to relocate it it's a pretty grueling hike to get past a tree line but the sight of fresh berries lets me know i'm close as i get into the alpine i lose track of the area that the bear was in all i can see are herds of mountain goats which would be great if i had a tag for them but i don't these animals make a home for themselves on lofty peaks and cliffs some real nasty country and it can make for a challenging hunt but i'm after bear and soon enough i see one now i'm not sure if it's the one that i saw earlier but either way it's way out there [Music] that thing is up there man [Music] it's tough bear to go after right there i've been tracking a black bear in southeast alaska for most of the day but either the thing got wind to me or i got turned around because now that bear is way out of range i think i might go i don't know i gotta decide i'd like to get a good look at it right now i can't tell if it's a big adult bear or not oh another bear you could actually go after him traveling outside the canyon i decided to go after it but it's a lot of ground to cover after an hour or so of climbing i lose my bearings yet again nothing looks the same i'm trying to figure out where the hell that bear was he should be down in here somewhere i don't know if we spooked there's two bears here very saw down there which is a smaller one there's a bigger one up above it but you'd never be able to get to him that bear is over just over 300 yards but there's no way you'd ever get it if you knocked it down the sheer cliffs and deep canyon makes it virtually impossible to cross let alone pack out a couple hundred pounds of meat if i did get a shot it's a long day a lot of climbing i'd be lucky to get back down by dark right now look at that bear unbelievable i know there's no way to do this it'd be like suicide to cross this thing but i can't i will live myself if i don't go over there and have a look it's on our hillside coming close look at this berry i don't have time to wait him out so so oh right there he stopped that was a rough stalk right there geez wait this is some tough country to hunt in man i tell you what wow that's gonna be a good bear right there though man he's a fatty but man it's gonna be a chore getting it out of there it was a lung shot within seconds the bear piled up the hunt is over but the work is not now i got to figure out a way to get a couple hundred pounds of meat fat hide and skull out of this canyon and back to my camp i got about an hour or so of daylight left so i'm gonna have to make some tough decisions here just taken down an alaskan black bear but the sun is setting and i've got about 200 pounds of meat fat and hide to pack out of this canyon and get back down to my camp you know there's right now the situation i'm in you can't take any of it lightly it's like you just weigh your options you know and for me i think the best thing for me is got it so the meat can cool come back tomorrow i hope there's not another mirror on it or if there's another bear on it that he hasn't eaten all my favorite parts yet but i think we'll be all right could be wrong but you never know [Music] by the time i reach camp it's already way past dark but like a gift from the skies i'm treated in one of the most beautiful displays of aurora borealis i've ever laid eyes on it's just enough to keep my spirits up and my feet moving getting cold tooth dot was definitely down below freezing now oh that's why i crawl in my bag honestly the thing i'm thinking now is that i get to worrying about that meat up there man it like embarrassing to get on that that's got this awful feeling now that i'm gonna get up there in the morning and something's gonna be up there snacking on that bear all right have to wait and see now foreign after a few hours of sleep i'm back on my feet and eager to get back to my bear i want to see if i made the right decision by leaving it overnight i had set a waypoint location of the bear on my gps so i don't get turned around again up there but nature has a way of clueing you in on such locations as well i bet you that's it we might be picking up on the odor from those guts coming up i mean that's it [Applause] about 100 yards from the bear hopefully mr grizz ain't up here [Applause] now it's just like i left it still some gut pile left bear hasn't been moved take a while to skin this guy out there's plenty daytime left so i think we're gonna be all right well the pack out is gonna be horrid cutting this back ham off when i'm home it's gonna go into some brine and into my smoker this winds up coming out basically winds up tasting like poor cam with a little bit of wildness thrown in from here down bone-in smoked ham in the old days they called smoked bear meat bear bacon good layer of fat on it on these bears that have been eating berries the best thing in my mind is right here is his body fat and this fat is just like a berry but if you look at this stuff like just these lobes like this you can melt that right down into the most perfect lard but that stuff's like gold right there so i'm definitely relieved that something didn't get in here and start eating all this except for birds so these these bears right now i mean they're up gorging on berries and they're just building up enough fat to get them through the hibernation by the time this guy comes out in the spring this is all gonna be gone see at this point like the work really starts when it comes to packing stuff out massive undertaking tons of weight start questioning like your very existence no i'm pretty much out of here so now my mind is jumping to the park where i finally get to eat some bear meat [Applause] i'm gonna tell you i am starving [Music] with the amount of daylight i got left i don't think that i'm gonna make it back up for the next trip so what i'm gonna do i'm just gonna unpack have dinner and stuff spend the night and then get up early in the morning and go back up for that next load fix up something to eat here celebrate my bear kill i'm gonna take some of this fat i'm gonna render it down into cooking oil then i'm gonna do deep fried maybe sirloin maybe loin just deep fry right in the bears fat so it's like bear meat cooked in bare fat which is good backpacking foods that stuff's energy packed stuff's like cutting sushi look at that oh my goodness stuff is so red see that's another reason why you want to hunt the high country and hunt hard is because you need to burn calories in order to feel good about the fact that you're about ready to eat pure fat because my friend always says well that's the good kind of fat okay when you're doing this at first you want to be careful because you want to start liquefying that fat and get a layer of oil in there because if you just put it too hot too quick you'll actually burn some of the pieces to the bottom this part you don't want to rush yeah we're getting some coating in there now all right this is starting to render out i definitely got enough oil to start cooking meat i need to grab the pieces i'm gonna throw in there [Music] basically you're cutting like little kebab sized pieces you do want to make sure to cook bear meat well black bears now are the leading cause of trichinosis you can imagine like how few people eat black bear meat the fact that it makes up 90 of the trichinosis cases in the u.s should illustrate you how prevalent trichinosis is in bears it doesn't affect the bear really doesn't do much to them but it can make a person pretty sick trigonosis is actually killed at a pretty low temp i mean you could cook it like 150 is fine to kill trick noses so right there bear meat cooked in bare fat dripped them a bear fat that's gonna be a lip burner for sure don't tell my cardiologist about this [Music] oh my god that's good i think because of the fat it's closer to beef than any other wild game i've eaten anyone who's got a bad impression to bear meat needs to come up and hit some of these blueberry bears man because it redefines what black bear meat can be [Music] man that's good [Music] there's something magical about hunting the back country in alaska [Music] every time i have the chance to hunt this rugged country i feel lucky in my mind what you put into a hunt directly affects what you get out of it this bear is going to feed me and my family for weeks and with every taste of it i will think back to this canyon filled mountain range and i'll remember just how much effort went into bringing home this amazing bounty that is the true beauty of hunting for your own food

Channel: MeatEater

Views: 510,350

Rating: 4.9040313 out of 5

Keywords: meateater, hunting, meat eater, steve rinella, steven rinella, wild game, bear, black bear, alaska, rifle hunting

Id: SFKbFQWdArI

Length: 22min 9sec (1329 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 08 2020