Not yet a hunting story

Brother Mike he already has. The place described is from memory not imagination and there are many such places in these mountains.

I'm hoping that your getaways will be very successful on both hunts. My question: if the bear hunt, (Grizzly, or Black) is successful, do you keep all of the meat? Do you cook it & then can it, or just freeze the different cuts for later consumption? I have heard that bear meat is prepared very much the same as pork, & tastes similar. In 2021, I bought a quart of canned Black Bear fat/grease from a man & his wife from Wisconsin that had shot a bear near his barn. They told me that is very good to use in making pie crusts. My wife won't use it, so it's still in the garage fridge, unopened. I paid $8.00 for it. They had a few more quarts on the table.

We do eat the bear meat but don't can it the first year. We like it fresh cooked but when a new season rolls around sometimes what is left in the freezer gets canned to make room for fresh. The only not so good bear meat we have ever had was from costal bears that consume quantities of fish. Meat from those bears gets a fishy smell and taste. We have used it but it not as good.
Where we lived in the Alaskan interior we were too far from the coast for that to be a problem. By the time the salmon made it that far inland the bears were already in hibernation. Interior bears black and grizzly fatten up on berries so the meat is sweet. Where we lived in Alaska there were large farms that raised grain so the bears also fed on grain and were very good eating. I always told people that asked about bear meat that if in the fall you get a bear that is blue on both ends it will be good to eat. They get that way from gorging on blue berries and it is absolutely true.
On the year our 4th sone was bourn On her doctors advice when her due date neared Tina went to Fairbanks on the day before moose season opened and didn't get home with the new baby until after the day after it closed. I was home with the other three boys and tried taking them with me moose hunting but it proved impossible with three small loud little boys. Since we got no moose that year I told Tina that I would have to get a bear a grizzly that I had been watching that had been regularly feeding in a barely field. Well I got that bear about a three year old sow that was blue on both ends and full of barley.
Tina wanted nothing to do with that meat but after some begging for he to at least cook some for me and the boys she made a nice roast with brown gravy and it smelled so good. We me and the boys were chowing down on that saying how good it was and finally Tina tried some and asked, "" can you get another one of these next year ?"" Between it eating grain and berries I believe that young grizzly was the best bear I have ever eaten.
  As to your question on the bear fat when I was a young man before I got married there were a couple older woman in the valley that would trade me a pie for some black bear fat because they said it made the very best pie crust.  Back then as a bachelor I provided several families with game meat on the chance that occasionally I would be invited for a meal of that meat.  That worked good for me and everyone benefited from it.