Bear oil

[4V50 Gary]

A neighbor harvested a black bear and gave me the fat. Remembering Ned Roberts' book, The Muzzle Loading Cap Lock Rifle, I started rendering it. Initially I tried the double boiler technique, but that only softened the fat. Then I placed two bricks on the grill and placed the pot atop the bricks. Success! It began melting and producing oil. It also smelled like pork fat, but not bacon. The oil was strained through an old t-shirt and poured into a jar (purchased at a church sale).

Will see if Ned Roberts is right about bear oil as a lubricant and preservative.

[noelf2]

What did Ned say was special about bear oil? Will it not go rancid or something? Is it hard like mutton tallow?

[4V50 Gary]

Roberts wrote that it was the best lubricant and preservative for smokepoles.

My classmate says it's great for cooking. I'm sure it is. Fat makes things taste better.

[Captchee]

when i was a kid , we used bear oil and grease for just about everything .
when properly rendered it wont really go rancid . mom would keep an old Crisco full of bear grease can in the cupboard to cook with .
Dad and I used the oil on our boots and rifles .
The grease wont harden up unless it gets real cold . if rendered properly It stays about like Crisco

the oil works real well on old softer barrels . but on the modern barrels made today , frankly i dont see much use for it . it does however make a good patch lube and does a reasonable job of preventing rust .

[4V50 Gary]

How does one render it properly?

What temperature did your family store it at? It snowed last night in Southern Colorado and there was still snow on the ground this morning. Not surprisingly, the oil coagulated.

Today on recommendation of a classmate, I used a slow cooker. It hardly melted anything. On Friday I go back to the Weber.

[Captchee]

well mom would cock it in pans over low heat . basically melting it down .
once the fat had cocked down the brown clumps would be skimmed out . then it would be placed in jars to cool and separate . Once cool , the grease would float and form on the top . The oil would be on the bottom .

Basically the same thing that happens when you cook bacon and drain off the pan . You get oil that stay liquid and grease on the top , IF its been cooked down far enough .
She would then take a spoon and dip out a section of grease so as to be able to pour out the oil into a separate jar . Once she had enough grease , she would cook that down again , then set it aside to cool . When all the oil was removed , then the jar cooled , the grease would all turn back to grease.
as to what we stored it at ?? well as i said the grease was kept in the cupboard and pantry . the oil dad kept outside int the carport right along side his traps and such .
i still have a baby food jar of oil out in my garage. Its un heated and is really pretty darn close to the outside temps . I have never that I can recall seen it thicken.. It very much acts just like if you left a jar of vegetable oil out in the cold .

[Pahoo]

Captchee
I ask, because I'm trying to get a better understanding of this process. So, after you render, you get two products; Grease and oil. I always thought that it all turns to grease, eventually. ....

We save our bacon grease for special recipes, in a refrigerated grease container. In the old days, it was quite common to have a salt, pepper and grease aluminum container set, which is now considered taboo. ....
Now, it is refrigerated and all looks like grease to me.

If Bear-Oil is all that good and in keeping with the old-school spirit, I'm going to render some. A buddy of mine just got a Minnesota bear and I'll ask him for some. I believe that biologist say that a Bear is closely related, to a pig. The grease should be good for patch lube as well .....

Thanks and;
Be Safe !!!

[noelf2]

I believe that biologist say that a Bear is closely related, to a pig.

Uh...Nope! Only in name "boars and sows", but they're not even in the same family of animals. Some people I know are closer related to pigs than any bear

[4V50 Gary]

Thanks CaptChee. Will reheat it per instructions. BTW, the first day we did it over the BBQ. A classmate who was over one mile away smelled it.

[Captchee]

oh ya there is a smell that for sure .

we used to eat alot of bear meat , and would specifically hunt them for the meat ..
i doing so we would pass on anything that had a very good chance of eating off of carcuse piles or alot of rotten fish. as such we hunted for bear in mostly in or around old homesteads with orchards or areas which had alot of wild berries .

while a bear may not be in the pig family the do have a lot of the same charictoristic .
IE we would never let them cool outside for more then a day like we would a deer or elk . The meat goes bad rather quickly.
The meat is also very lean and dry . So we would add pork fat to it when we ground it up into hamburger .
Roasts and such we cooked just like any pork roast
Fat wise its much like that of a pig . Very oily and dense

i went out in the to see if i could find a jar of bear oil .
sure enough . From the date on the lid , this would have been made in 1981, jar is alittle dusty LOL . its been out in the cold for , that i know , all its life , placed up on a shelf .
i shook it to see if it was jelled so it maty look alittle on the milky side as there was maybe a 1/2 inch of grease that had formed back on the top . thats the light color you see mixed through the nice honey color

[Roaddog]

Cut the fat into small chunks and ike Cap said low heat. Do not let it boil or the oil will evaperate.

[bedbugbilly]

And don't forget . . . if you're using a right hand front stuffer . . . the bear oil HAS to come from a right handed bear!

Looking forward to hearing how it works for you . . .

[Doc Hoy]

Pigs are hard workers, building their houses from straw or sticks or even bricks.

Bears are squatters. They take up residence in the homes that others build.






..... ;o)







.... Sorry guys.