Going On A Bear Hunt

*This post includes photos of a dead bear and meat processing so if that's not for you then feel free to skip*

Last weekend Will went bear hunting with his friend Derek. Along with finding this super neat abandoned moonshine operation, 

they also got a bear! 

On Monday evening we began processing the meat. It was my first time doing anything like this (I only ever dissected a sheep eye in highschool, so opening up animals is foreign to me) and it was so fascinating! 

In this photo above you can see am elbow poking out and all the muscle around the bones. It really is so amazing how God designed mammals. 

We bought 25lbs of pig fat to mix in with the bear to add flavour. 

Derek and Karen graciously taught us how to make sausage and let us use all their equipment on Wednesday evening as we worked into Thursday getting all the meat ground, mixed, and stuffed. 

Here Will is doing a second, finer grind, of the meat while adding in the fat. 

In the kitchen we added spices to the meat and then fed that through the sausage stuffer. 

Once the intestines are stuffed, they get rolled into links and then stabbed with a needle so they don't burst. 

We calculated that we made roughly 60lbs worth of sausage! 

Will rigged up some fancy rack in our fridge to hang the sausages from

The fridge was full of sausage! This isn't even the most we had at once. 

On Friday we went to a Father's Day BBQ and brought some sausage along to share and try! 

It was delicious and Delilah ate several pieces which is unusual for her when it comes to meat. 

It has been such a neat experience learning how to process our own meat. A lot of work and time went into it, but it is very rewarding too. 

By the time we finished we weighed out roughly 70lbs of sausage! 

We also kept two roasts but didn't weigh those.