Not many people can say they eat like Daniel Boone, the great frontiersman. But in our household we can say that we do. I must admit that it is unique and very good, nutritious food too. How did Daniel Boone eat, you ask? Well, his family grew a large garden of fruit and vegetables on their Kentucky farm. They also had a cow for fresh milk and cheese. And of course, Daniel shot a lot of deer and bears for meat for his family.  

On our farm, we also grow a large garden of fruit and vegetables. And yes, we have cows for fresh milk and cheese. But what about deer and bear meat, you ask? Yes, we have deer and bear on our farm, so we do have their meat, even though I don’t hunt them.

You see, we have a friend, Ryan, who got deer and a bear hunting licenses this last fall. We have a good number of deer in our big woods. They like to come out into our corn and hayfields to eat. We enjoy having them around. It’s also good to harvest some of them so they don’t get overpopulated. That was Ryan’s job, and he did very well in getting a couple of large deer.

But what about the bear, you ask? Well, bear hunting is very challenging. Bears do a lot of roaming and are very smart, cautious animals with an absolutely outstanding nose on them. They are dangerous, too; they can kill livestock and people. That is one reason I don’t like having them around. When Ryan got a bear hunting license, we were really happy.

There was one drawback on it, though; Ryan has to travel an hour on the road to get to our farm. He also has a job and a family, so his time is limited. To hunt bear, a person needs to bait them at least two to three months before the season opens. This involves putting bait out for them every week and checking the wildlife camera that is set up over the bait site. Since my friend couldn’t commit that much time to do it, I ended up volunteering to do the baiting and camera work.   

Bears are very unpredictable animals, I learned. During the summer, they would visit our bait site three or four days in a row and then not show up for 10 days or so. Fall came and so did the hunting season. In the fall, the bears ate a lot of acorns and fresh field corn, so they would come even less often to our bait site.  

Ryan took one week of his vacation time to hunt bear the first week of the season. The problem? The bears never showed up the whole week. He was really disappointed and so were we. We prayed he would get a nice-sized bear. I kept baiting throughout the rest of the season. The last couple of weeks of the season, the bears really started to hit our bait site again. So I started checking it every other day and giving Ryan updates on it.

Through the summer months, we had two bears visiting our site regularly, but now during the last two weeks of the season we had four bears coming into the site almost daily. The problem was that Ryan was so busy he just couldn’t get up here to hunt. Finally, things opened up for him and he was able to come the last day of the season. We prayed and believed he would get a bear. It was down to crunch time.

It was an hour before the close of the bear season, and the kids and I were outside working on our flail chopper, getting it ready for the bedding harvest. Suddenly a rifle shot rang out, followed by a second one from the direction of our big woods. I said to the kids in a loud, excited voice, “Ryan just shot a bear.” A minute later my phone rang; Ryan was calling to tell me he just shot a bear. He wanted to know if I would come and help him track it down.

We found the bear 70 yards away – dead. Ryan shot it right through its heart. When Ryan had the bear ready, we got it out of the woods and onto his pickup, which was no easy thing for two strong men to do. It was a good medium-sized bear and it was a heavy hunk to handle.  

Since we are his friends and the landowners, and also since I helped him so much, Ryan’s treating us to a lot of bear and deer meat. It is certainly different than the meat we are used to, but it is very good. We found out that the bear meat is really delicious when Joanne puts it in our vegetable soup like Rebecca did for Daniel. We’re eating just as well as the Boones did and enjoying it just as much.

It is wonderful how the Lord provides so many good foods for us to enjoy. Whether it’s fruits or vegetables, to all kinds of different meats, God has set such an abundant table before us to enjoy, all because He loves us so. I know this is most certainly true; here we are eating bear soup.