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Full Circle Arizona Success
Legendary Bear Hounds Part 45
Cooking Bear Medium Rare
Tennessee Monster! Buddies, Bears, & Treeing Walkers
Mar/Apr 2024 Volume 25 - Issue 2 Cover photo by Paul Bruner
By Josh Kirchner
Full Circle
By Brett Benton
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Eating Black Bear Medium Rare
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By Matt Geiger
Bear University!
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Use of Leashed Tracking Dogs
By Paul Bruner
A True Tennessee Monster!
By Bernie Barringer
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By Steve Fielder Legendary Bear Hound: Part 54 - Hatchet
Is Bigger Actually Better?
By Kevin Bustard
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Good Friday
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Age is Just a Number | Aging Black Bears
By Timothy D. Fowler
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Baked Bear Steak
By Dr. Jenn Ballard
Columns 46 Bowhunting Bears
Bear Hunting Magazine Trail Camera Contest Winner Win a Moultrie Mobile Camera!
by Bernie Barringer - Bear Professor
Who Ordered the Buffet
48 Blood, Sweat, & Bears
-North Carolina-
by Douglas Boze - Bear Dude
50 Black Bear Biology
by Dr. Jenn Ballard - Animal Doc
52 Western Bear Hunting
by Jana Waller - Western Hunter
54 Bruin Desinations
by Al Raychard - Bear Hunting Veteran
Submitted by: Doug Temple
To enter, submit a unique trail camera photo to info@bear-hunting.com or post to our Facebook page: Bear Hunting Magazine
56 Sacred Pursuit by TL Jones - Hound Pro
58 In Hot Pursuit
by Barry ‘Bear’ Siragusa - Hound Dude
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Bear Hunting
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Full Circle October Black Bears in AZ by Josh Kirchner
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@dialedinhunter
Mar/Apr 2024
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Eating Bear Medium Rare by Brett Benton @brettbenton_
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Bear Hunting
Addressing Trichinosis with a Sous Vide
Photos By: Henry Hawkins | @directorhidef
Mar/Apr 2024
W
hile the bison is widely recognized as the iconic American animal, I feel that Ursus americanus deserves more credit for its part in laying the groundwork for early exploration and settlement into the United States. Even the name says it all! Black bears have long been a key component in American history. Along with bison, they were a staple first in the everyday life of many native cultures before Europeans later arrived and similarly hunted bears for all they had to offer. Their hides are tough and durable, their thick fur provided warmth through hard winters, their fat was used for leather goods, candles, soap, and more, and—no differently than why many of us hunt them today—they are a plentiful and sustainable food source. We have come a long way since those days of old. Yet with information more readily available than ever before, bears are still subject to the “word of mouth” that surrounds them. It is not uncommon to hear folks strongly voice their opinions about how you shouldn’t or why they don’t eat bear. This is a folkloric concept that bewilders me. How can an animal, once so highly valued for their delicious and nutritionally dense meat, now be considered not worthy of taking by so many within the hunting community? It seems there are two primary misconceptions when it comes to eating bear today. The first being that bears are no good to eat, usually described with more expressive language akin to “nasty”, “disgusting”, or my least favorite, “inedible”. If I am being truthful, I almost find statements like these offensive. Nevertheless, everyone is entitled to their own opinions, which are usually based on personal experience. I have personally been eating bear year-round for nearly four years now and have never once had a single piece of bear meat that was off-putting. A major factor to consider is that bears are what they eat, and I think it’s safe to say that a bear from Northwest Montana that has been grazing on spring grasses, summer grubs, and fall riparian berries will probably taste better than their coastal Alaskan, salmon-eating relatives or their urban, trash-eating counterparts found all over the U.S. It is also worth mentioning that a hunter’s due diligence (or lack thereof) when field dressing and processing can ultimately make the biggest difference in the quality of meat. Bears run hot because of their higher fat density and thick fur, and for the same reasons that our forefathers chose these hides for warmth, one should do everything in their power to get their bears cooled off as soon as possible when harvested. Mainly I feel that there is a widespread lack of experience and education when it comes to eating bears. Now, thanks to people like Clay Newcomb, in recent years the hunting and eating of bears has seen a rise in popularity and, at the very least, curiosity. I believe our culture wants to reconnect with the old ways like raising or hunting your own food and partaking in activities like rendering bear fat for cooking and making common household items. As a matter of fact, my curiosity about bear fat was a driving factor in why I learned to hunt them in the first place. This does lead me to the second most common misconception about eating what should be considered a modern-day delicacy: that you must cook bear meat to 160°F before eating it. This is complicated, because it is somewhat true, although not entirely. I’ll start with addressing why this has been standard policy when it comes to eating bears. As we all know, our furry friends are carriers of the trichinella parasite. Trichinella is a roundworm that can cause a horribly excruciating illness called trichinosis, with symptoms including nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, fever, muscle weakness and joint pain, face swelling, and more. As if this wasn’t bad enough, some of these symptoms may not show up until weeks later and can last up to months or even years. Basically, trichinosis is caused by eating undercooked meat that have trichinella www.bear-hunting.com
larvae embedded in the muscle tissue of the animal, and when ingested the larvae are emancipated by stomach acid, travel to the intestine, and eventually reproduce. Then, more larvae enter the bloodstream and travel to their final destination: the muscle tissue of the host. They are a nasty little parasite. While it used to be found in domestic pork, nowadays it is mainly found in carnivores like mountain lions and wolves, with bears being the most common culprit for reported cases of trichinosis in the United States today. So why on God’s green earth would anyone want to experience that? It seems far-fetched that someone would read about something so cringeworthy and be willing to take that risk, and for most people I think the idea of it is farfetched. It was for me too, but I’d be lying if I said I never thought about eating medium rare bear. I hold steadfast in my opinion that bear is worth so much more than the grind pile. I do love bear sausage, but in doing our own processing over the years my wife and I have made bear ham, used necks and shanks for roasts, taken whole shoulders for smoking bear “butts”, smoked bear ribs, and a lot more. Almost all of my bears have been harvested in the fall and, as previously mentioned, their fat is incredibly useful. We use it for baking, searing steaks, cooking eggs, grinding our meat with bear fat instead of pork, and the list goes on. While much leaner than beef or pork, the added fat marbling in the meat of fall bears makes the meat almost like a more robustly flavored beef, and I’ve found that you can substitute bear in almost any dish made with domestic animals. Yet with as many ways as we have eaten bear, I knew I would never be satisfied eating well-done bear steak. Aside from backstraps and tenderloins, I refused to process bear steaks like I would deer or elk. This bothered me, but the risk of trichinosis outweighed the benefit of truly tasting bear for what it is; at least it did until a few years ago when my brother approached me with the idea of cooking bear steak via sous vide. “What the heck is a sous vide? Absolutely not,” I initially told him. But out of respect for his intelligence and culinary background, I at least let him make his case. He explained to me that the method of sous vide involves vacuum sealing food that is then placed in a water bath with a machine that precisely regulates the water temperature for extended periods of time. I still didn’t understand what he was getting at until he mentioned the most important piece of information: ‘The FSIS Compliance Guideline for the Prevention and Control of Trichinella and Other Parasitic Hazards in Pork Products’. In 2018, the USDA directed the Food Safety and Inspection Service to publish an updated guideline concerning tested temperatures for effectively eliminating trichinella in pork. He then directed me to the temperature chart in the guideline: at 144°F trichinella is eliminated instantly, at 142°F it’s one minute, at 138° it’s two minutes, at 134°F it’s six minutes, at 130°F it’s 30 minutes, and so forth. Then it clicked. It was like the lightbulb had finally turned on and in that exact moment, I felt like we were two scientists on their way to discovery. He was proposing using the precise temperature regulation of sous vide to accurately sustain the proper temperatures of getting rid of trichinella. His proposal was backed with real scientific testing, and although the idea of it was theoretical, it did make sense. While I could not hide my excitement at the possibility of eating Bear Hunting
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Bear University A Wisconsin Bait Story by Matt Geiger Fifty hours is a long time to sit in motionless silence, longer than the most devout monks’ meditation sessions and longer than it would take to circumnavigate our planet in an airplane. There have been entire countries that rose and fell in less time. And that’s how long I spent this autumn, perched in a tree stand, staring at a pile of bait in Wisconsin’s 68,000acre Black River State Forest, thinking about bears. Spread out over the course of a week, I sat and waited, watching the hours creep by. I tried not to move my feet or my head. I tried not to blink. I fought the terrible compulsion to check my phone every few minutes. I tried not to scratch the various itches that sprang up out of nowhere the moment I climbed into the stand each day. Most non-hunters assume the pursuit of big game is a rollicking, action-packed adventure. But my first bear hunt was more of a spiritual journey than a physical one. I experienced various crises of faith, eventually deciding that I believed devoutly in God, to whom I immediately prayed for a bear to saunter into the clearing in front of me. The all-powerful deity instead chose to send me 500 heavy-footed squirrels, each of which made my heart thud in my chest, only to fall with disappointment. I lived in a remote old farmhouse during much of my trip. Each night, I would go to sleep discouraged, rereading Cormac McCarthy’s The Crossing as I drifted off to sleep. I would wake up with my well of hope ever-so-slightly replenished by some trick of the night. “Today’s the day!” I said to my fellow hunters as I ventured into the woods again. I was correct. Each day was “the day”: the day I didn’t see any of the state’s 24,000 black bears, the day my legs fell asleep, the day I almost died trying to hold in a sneeze, and then the day I flirted with madness. And each day I sat and thought about bears, chewing on the countless facts and stories I had consumed about them over the course of the prior six months like some kind of hunting ruminant, gnawing on the cud of all the information I had gathered as I prepared for my trip. I thought about the way they move, the way they think, the way they experience the world. I applied for my first bear tag on a whim while buying my annual deer licenses. I figured it would take a few years of preference points to draw a tag—it can take a full decade in some parts of the state—and was pleasantly surprised to receive a bright orange card from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources 20
Bear Hunting
While preparing for his first bear hunt, the author came across the Ainu people from northern Japan in his studies.
Mar/Apr 2024
This is an Asiatic black bear. The Ainu people hunted these bears along with the Ussuri brown
The Ainu People of Northern Japan During the author’s research he came across the Ainu, an indigenous people native to the northern islands of Japan. The Ainu’s lives were centered around bears. Bear’s were so important to them that bears are a part of their religion. Bear Hunting The Ainu people traditionally hunted Ussuri brown bears and Asian black bears alongside many other critters and fish with arrows and spears with poison-coated points. They hunted in groups with dogs and set spring traps loaded with arrows. They also would hunt bears in their dens. Rituals
The Ainu practice arctolatry, or bear worship. While they have many rituals involving animals, the most shocking of rituals involves getting bear cubs out of the den and women raising the cub as her own child. They would hold a ritual called lomante every five to ten years and sacrifice the bear with ceremonial arrows. The act was outlawed in 1955 for animal cruelty yet became exempt in 2007 due to its cultural significance. There was a dance in lomante that mimicked the movements of a living bear. The belief was that the bear would help care for them in death.
a few months later, informing me that I had earned the chance to go bear hunting that very fall. The only hitch was that I knew almost nothing about bears or how to harvest them. I did the only thing you can do when you are completely clueless about a topic. I turned my attention to anyone and anything that might teach me, any guide that might help me inch closer to the summit of this mountain. I read every article about bear hunting I could find. I listened to podcasts about food sources. I watched countless YouTube videos about shot placement, learning quickly that there are various passionate debates about whether or not you should aim for the middle of the middle or a spot a few inches back toward the front of the animal. I read The Ozark Journal of Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Gerstäcker, reliving his various accounts of market hunting with his dog, Beargrease, in 1841 and 1842, my jaw dropping as he chronicled one bear hunt in which an enraged bruin killed his human hunting companion and five of their best hounds. I reread William Faulkner’s The Bear, in which a group of men in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County pursue Old Ben, a legendary boar, year after year. Even my nine-year-old daughter walked down to the library and took out all the books about bears she could find, bringing them home to us to read together. We ventured to zoos, where I gazed intently at the bears, trying to see through their heavy fat and fur and glean the exact situation of their vitals. I also read everything I could find about the Ainu people, the bearded, tattooed indigenous people of Japan’s northern islands, who worshiped bears and practiced animism. Despite centuries of attempts by Japan’s predominant culture and government to erase the Ainu and their history, they persist today in small numbers, offering glimpses into a culture that is 20,000 years old. In the Ainu faith, the world is filled with spiritual beings capable of helping or harming people and their pursuits. The most important religious ritual in Ainu culture involved the capture of a bear
The Ainu’s beliefs deeply involved bears and nature.
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Good Friday Freezer Filling in BC by Kevin Bustard
As I smelled the vital rot of the forest floor, just He created particular creatures, unlike rabbits, deer, or cows. after the snow melted, I angled precipitously down a mountain He established large carnivores for the prey animals because mining trail to intercept a bear I had glimpsed from over a kilo- the classes ultimately belong together. Prey species require meter away. It was early springtime hunting for me, which runs predators to remain true to their best wild selves. Like a tiger or leopard, the creation of bears was on the order of imagining a tight second to fall and the smells are identical, mushroomy a tornado or a Nor’easter. He was making something which and gamey. The landscape was steep, varied, dry, and rocky, with lodgepole pines and aspen above lending to riparian tree acts solely on its behalf, without consultation, without the want for approval, with personality and fervor, and devoid of species near the river. Flanking the path was alder, the trees malice. A storm levels the coastside town, but not because it here and there rooted within the trail twisting into a sinewy mess—which would make it barely passable by an ATV but okay hates towns; the tornado disassembles a farmer's barn, but not because it dislikes agriculture. for walking itself. Areas with less understory were composed That’s what a bear is, a beautiful and impersonal, of douglas firs, ponderosa, and white pines, offering shooting sometimes frightful force of nature. Caring for no one, mindful lanes, while these gave way at the river bottom to more alder of nothing but its solitary need to be what it is created to be. and cottonwoods. It was dry above, wet below. Look into a bear's eyes, and what’s there has scarcely more I had just a quick glimpse of the bear and just as for you than a glance from a hen. I’m not suggesting bears are quickly plotted his course. We would likely meet with him side-hilling the shale-strewn incline above the riverbed. I might stupid, but I am insisting they hold other creatures with a fierce disregard. hear the clatter of stones or catch him in another opening. I was still moving quickly and without effort to be quiNearby mountains capped at 8,800 ft, with the river bottom being the lowest elevation at 1,800. It was Good Friday, too soon et, only mindful of the sometimes swirling air currents. I judged in the season, but I was hopeful for this region's earliest ursine myself to be over halfway now. Drawing closer to a predator so indifferent to other life that they will eat their progeny while risers. I moved quickly because the afternoon was over, and I would soon run out of light. The first frogs were starting up, so still alive places the bear hunter on a singular footing. It's a it would happen soon. I felt confident the bear was a male and grand drama, old as time. I think people get bears wrong. A bear is not a big he looked to be a big one. Bear hunting is a family thing for us. My family of seven dog; oddly enough, they share more than a few characteristics with cats. Watch the wary approach of a bear to see if I’m lives on black bear meat, harvesting many large and average wrong. If you believe having an observably nervous disposition bears, even small bears. We eat every part, from skull meat to means that they pose little threat to a man, then you have their feet. Our children go for seconds of liver and heart. We break them down and pack them out in the dark through grizzly never attempted to contain the freedoms of a feral kitten. Then country because their flesh has great value for us, and preserv- pick up a dead cat or try to carry a bear, which is like lugging a great mass of jello. Languorous when alive, more so after ing it is our most sacred trust. We have never once lost any of that precious meat to bone sour, rot, or flies. That fact alone is they expire, battling either is contesting a profoundly armed the one great highlight of my hunting career. Sometimes, I won- physical being in near liquid form. The scripture says a record is kept of every life, man, der how, at my age, I remain as physically strong as I do, but in and beast until the day the scales are balanced. How did each the end it makes sense. Living almost entirely on bear meat, I live and die? Do they remember grappling with their siblings? am composed of bears. I don’t know. I know an old bear remembers their mother, or I believe God created bears because there is someat the very least, her lessons. They are solitary creatures from thing special about them, the idea of them. On the sixth day, 30
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Mar/Apr 2024
the time their mother drives them away, but they never forget how to seek safety within a large tree, just as she taught them. I knew it would happen quickly, and my opportunity would be limited by the thick undergrowth, up close and personal, with dying light. Was he as big as I sensed after one glimpse from a kilometer away? I hoped this bear would go home with me that night in coolers packed with frozen water bottles. I hoped my history and his would cross so I could carry forward alone. Whatever brought us to this place was significant to each, but I wanted to merge our stories into one. Things I learned about hunting from my father and the cub lessons he retained from his mother were about to converge. I was walking this same mining path while bow hunting two years before when a sow grizzly suddenly boiled out of the brush. I was nothing more than a footnote because she had more significant problems. In a hard lope, chuffing and blowing, she ran uphill while checking her back trail. The bear I was hunting now was chasing her off, something I pieced together later. As I encountered this black bear for the first time, which shared some characteristics with a brown bear, I was impressed by its size. I told my wife about the 600-pound chocolate colored black bear I’d witnessed chasing off an adult grizzly. Bears of that size are a rarity in the mountains of British Columbia. Far from farms or towns, living on an arcane diet doesn’t produce fat bears. These are mountain bears who need to be able to scale a sheer rock face hunting sheep and goats. I didn’t know it yet, but I was about to kill the same bear during twilight, and from just three or four yards away using a lever gun with iron sights. On April 15, right after the snow melted, I would kill this early riser. The sun had now set over the Camelsfoot Range, and under the sprawling conifer canopy I was suddenly unable to see much. I slowed my pace to use my ears, feeling I was close. It was getting darker by the minute when I thought I heard something. I stopped and listened intently. Had I heard a squirrel? Mixed with the smell of clay and rotted leaf matter was another odor. The whole effect was a bit intoxicating. I could smell a bear's coat and skin, the singular and pleasant aroma of a black bear. I waited and tried to peer wherever I could into the dense alders. But there was nothing except for a wall of shadows. I crouched and leaned from side to side while my feet remained planted. I could hear soft rustling close by. The darkness was thick, so I checked my hunting app for legal hours. I had thirty minutes to go, but under the great trees it was completely dark. Behind the trunks of towering trees, the sky was a gray-blue slate, but near the ground all was black. I stood as I was for five or six minutes. www.bear-hunting.com
The author’s family of seven primarily eats bear meat.
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Legendary Bear Hounds: Part 54 Hatchet
by Steve Fielder
@stephen.f.fielder
Owner, Elijah Keller
Michigan Bear Hunters Association VP Elijah Keller with Hatchet and a western UP bear. Hatchet treeing a bobcat.
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Bear Hunting
Elijah Keller, an outside salesman for an electrical wholesale distributor, is 35 years old. Married to his wife Megan, the Kellers have three children: Anders, age seven, and twins Henrik and Ada, age five. Keller was born in the Lower Peninsula of Michigan in Traverse City but was raised in Cadillac. Today he lives in Tustin, Michigan in Wexford County. Keller, some could say, was destined to be a bear hunter and houndsman. His grandmother’s first cousin was Carl T. Johnson, an iconic Michigan outdoorsman for which the Carl T. Johnson Hunting and Fishing Center in Cadillac was named. Keller remembers meeting the famed conservationist as a child. Keller’s family came to Michigan in the late 1800s to early 1900s from Scandinavia, namely Finland, Norway, and Sweden as well as Germany. Farm and hunting dogs have been a part of Keller’s family from their earliest beginnings in the U.S. Keller’s hunting heritage provided many memories for the houndsman, whose 40 acre domicile butts right up to the Manatee National Forest. “We had a lot of snowshoe hares,” he recalls. “My great grandfather, Carl Kangas, enjoyed running raccoons, hares, and foxes with his hounds. He ran a Walker and Bluetick cross-type dog and called them Walkers, although they looked like the English dogs of today. I never went hunting with him. His son, my Great Uncle Martin Kangas, hunted coons, foxes, and coyotes. I began coon hunting with my dad and Great Uncle Martin when I was very young. My dad didn’t have dogs until I got into hunting. In those days, they were hunting Black and Tan Coonhounds. Great Uncle Martin had a couple of registered Treeing Walkers, a Redbone and the Black and Tans. He never was a breeder but would pick up a good dog now and then.” Mar/Apr 2024
From the start, hunting bobcats appealed to Keller. As a young man, he was consumed by sports and by running the hounds. “We began to transition more toward hunting cats,” he said. “I also wanted to run bears with the hounds at that point, but my dad said he didn’t have the money to let me be a bear hunter.” After a brief hiatus to play right guard on his college football team, Keller explained that there was only one hound in the Keller kennel, a great Black and Tan. “By that time, I was sure I wanted to be a bear hunter,” he said. “I had gone bear hunting with friends and right away I got a Bluetick. It turned out good enough that I knew I wanted more. Keller liked his Blueticks to be racy: built with good footspeed, good mouths, and excellent cold-trailers. “They have to rig hard, hunt with their heads up, and run to catch,” he said. He had a pup named Jess that he got when he was hunting with his partner Ryan Luhrs. “She did pretty good,” he recalled. “Not the fastest starter, but well enough that I kept her.” The man Keller calls his bear hunting mentor, Ryan Luhrs, can take the credit for producing the subject of our Legendary Bear Hound Series this month, the hound called Hatchet. His dame was Josey Wales; her family tree was strongly-rooted in the hounds of Clifford Garver who lived around Lake City and of John Ray, originally from Detroit, who moved to Lake City and then later to the eastern UP. “I hunted with Josey,” Keller says, “and she really excelled as a cat dog. She was extremely cold-nosed and very intelligent. If she opened, she was sure of herself. For a female, she was every bit as gritty as you would ever need. She could do it on her own. When on dry ground, on a running bear, she opened a lot. She had a bawl mouth on track: loud, clear, and clean. Josey was Left to right: Dale Null, Wendall Lybrink, and Elijah Keller. Dogs left to right, Hank, Millie, Poncho, and Hatchet.
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a houndy-type Bluetick, long and narrow-bodied with low set ears and deep flews.” “Hatchet’s sire, a hound named Buster, was owned by a local conservation officer,” Keller said. “Ryan knew the breeding and wanted to breed him for that reason. One hundred percent of the pups from the first cross of Buster to Josey made bear dogs. I want to say there were seven pups in the litter. Ryan originally kept three of them: Hatchet, a male named Ghost, and a female named Loki.” “The pups started early,” he said. “Right away, we worked them on small critters and coons. They were hell on wheels from an early age. Due to life’s circumstances at the time, I couldn’t take Hatchet as a puppy,” he lamented. “The pups had been born in March and Ryan wanted me to take him that fall. As we went into cat season, the pups were eight or nine months old. The first cat they ran, Hatchet and Ghost stopped it in a brush pile. Hatchet worked his way into the cat and went through it like a buzzsaw.” In the meantime, Hatchet had been sold to another hunter that continued to hunt the dog through the winter. Bear season started on July 8th and the guy decided bear hunting wasn’t for him. He had talked to Ryan about taking him back. Ryan told Keller, “You don’t have a choice. You are taking this dog.” By that time, Keller had moved and was able to adopt him. “From the first day I had him back,” Keller explained, “he ran and treed a bear with three other dogs. From that point on, he quickly escalated to being the first dog I pulled out of the box. I got him in late July, and before that following winter he was my sole cold-trailing dog, one hundred percent.” I asked Keller how Hatchet performed as a rig dog (the dog that is used to strike a bear track while riding in or on top of the dog box in the hunting vehicle). “We hunt in Anders Keller with Hatchet, left, and Jess. All three are treeing on a nice Michigan boar.
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