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A friend here locally after reading my blog about my neighbors said that I should make it clear you can eat bear. Like all wild critters, bears taste like what they’re eating. Luckily they are omnivores so they do not get a strong taste to them. For example, deer that live in and around Cedar swamps taste like you’re chewing on a cedar tree. The meat of a bear is red meat and very fat this time of year. That fat was very important in the diet the early settlers as well as Native Americans. We now try to limit the fats in our diet, but back then it was very difficult to get fats and you can even suffer a deficiency disease without enough fat in your diet. These are sources of protein for the settlers such as cottontail rabbits and deer. Both of which are almost totally devoid of fat particularly rabbits. Rabbits were always a good source of protein because you could set snares and you didn’t have the expense of ammunition for a rifle. It’s fairly easy in the woods to identify rabbit trails and that makes it easy to set snares. The fat that bears provided served all sorts of purposes. It could be used to lubricate many things. It could be used to slick your hair down. In the cold of our winters, it could be applied to your face to stave off frostbite. There is a sled dog race over near Duluth Minnesota called the John Beargrease. As I understand it, the race is named after a Native American who was born in 1858 and was the son of the son of an Anishinabe Chief, Moquabimetem. Moquabimetem translates into English as Beargrease. John was the winter mail carrier between Two Harbors, Minnesota and Grand Marais, Minnesota during the last two decades of the nineteenth century. He did use a dog team on his mail route and that became the idea for the sled dog race I mentioned earlier. The name Beargrease shows the importance of bear fat for the Native Americans.