Bear meat question

Hey guys wondering if some of the seasoned bear hunters on here can help me out. Couple weekends ago i went to help my uncle work on treestands to get ready for deer season. He also wanted to get in a bear hunt because they have done huge amounts of damage to the farmers corn. I took my two buddies up with me that just got their licenses with me so they could get in their first hunt for big game. Long story short my uncle shot a young male in the morning and during the evening hunt i spotted a bear coming out of the corn and wanting to be a good friend pointed it out to my buddy who was beside me in the stand. He dropped it at about 125 yards with his .270 we field dressed and then took the bear up to the vehicle and loaded it up and headed for home. By the time we drove back and got it skinned and quartered it was late and we were wiped so we hung it in cheesecloth sacks from the rafters of buddys garage and we all crashed. Got up the next morning and we decided although we had never done it we were going to butcher it ourselves. Took a while but we completely boned it out and got the meat bagged and labelled and into the freezer. Having never tried bear i was not sure to expect but this past weekend we did a roast in the slow cooker with taters and onions and carrots and i was pleasantly surprised how tender and juicy the meat was. To me it tasted a lot like a roast beef done in a slow cooker. So fast forward to today at work i was telling one of the guys i work with the exact same story as above and when i finished he looked at me and said how do you test the meat for salmonella? He told me bear meat is known to have salmonella and needs to be tested. Ive never heard of this. I know you have to fully cook the meat due to trichinosis but i have never heard of salmonella or testing for salmonella when it comes to bear meat. Is this something i shoud be worried about or is it just bs?

Sorry for the long winded post. I appreciate any input thanks! Also want to add the guy that told m3 this has been hunting for 30+ plus years that is what has me wondering.

Tested!!! Yea right lol. So this guy had been hunting bear that long and gets them all tested? I call bs hehe

Bear meat is top notch, as many many thousands of hunters will attest to. I've never heard of anyone getting sick.

It's real simple really, just get it to a more well done cooking temp as a rule, but I still like some "pink" in my boneless bear steak, even though it doesn't dry out as quick as other game. Pork too for that matter.

Cheers

He may be confusing Salmonella with Trichinosis. Cooking well takes care of bacteria......or he might be pullin' yer peepee.:moose:

Cook it to an internal temperatures of 165deg and I'll be all good.

Isn't it something like you cook chicken to 155deg to get rid of [COLOR=#333333]salmonella and bear to 165deg to get rid of t[COLOR=#333333]richinosis? Similar but different

Congrats on the bears!

There's no more danger of contracting salmonella from bear meat than any other meat. The meat would have to be contaminated during processing. The salmonella bacteria doesn't live in meat, it lives in digestive tracts. Your co-worker is regurgitating false information from somewhere.

As trimmer has said it is Trichinosis that you have to worry about. Due to the eating of dead and rotting meat as well as rooting around in the ground the chances of getting Trichinosis is a lot higher than any other big game. The government says 160F for all wild game but Trichinosis is killed at 137F, so you need to make sure you have your meat over that temp so get rid of the parasite. If you are worried about Salmonella then you need to make sure you cook the meat to that 160F, that is why that number is used, it is a safe number for meat.

I do not know anyone who would get their meat tested.

Bear meat is delicious, treat it like pork for temp to be safe but bear tastes more like beef than any other wild game to me, delicious.

bear meat is great, i agree with all the above posts particularly that he is confusing the [COLOR=#333333] Trichinosis with [COLOR=#333333]Salmonella

Thats what I thought too was he was thinking trichinosis because ive definitely heard of that before. Just to be clear the guy telling me this is not a bear hunter he hunts moose deer. He is from eastern europe and told me back home they have to test bears for salmonella. Having never heard anything like this before i thought i would reach out to the ontario bear hunters in this community. I just wanted to get more experienced opinions so i wasnt worrying about eating some tainted meat so thank you guys for removing any doubts i may have had no matter how small. For what it is worth I am definitely converted that corn fed bear was tender and delicious and with no need to bait and the farmer being happy we removed a few bears it was a win for us all especially my buddy harvesting his first big game. Thanks again for the advice it is much appreciated. Good luck this season and stay safe!