I have been using Sous Vide water baths for cooking game meat to a specific internal temperature. Below is the Sous Vide tool to heat water and food to exact temperatures.
For example; my venison can be SV’d to 125F then sear on a grill for perfect rare venison. But now cooking bear meat to medium rare? How is that possible?
Bear meat, like pork has the possibility of containing Trichinella, thus for years, federal guidelines for cooking are at much higher internal temperatures usually 160ºF and higher.
I read an article in Bear Hunting Magazine where the author now eats his black bear meat at 140ºF after using a Sous Vide (time and temperature technique in a water bath) perfected by Federal Government Food Safety Guidelines below to kill parasites like wild game born trichinella. See Table A1 for time and temperature in the website below to kill Trich..
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7033995/
The bear recipe article from Bear Hunting Magazine below.
http://www.bear-hunting.com/recipes?ID=8F8AB0C2-9C1E-49E2-AC48-B79ACA718A2C
I have not tried the Sous Vide method for Bear meat.
When in doubt cook to at least 160ºF internal temp. like in a stew. I pressure cook my bear for stew.
Note; Steve Rinella of Meateater fame made a serious field cooking mistake in 2011 with Alaskan black bear meat. He cooked it over an outdoor fire but was not sure of its internal temperature. He and his hunt party ate it and came down with Trichinosis infection and all had to take antibiotics. It was no fun!
I don’t know what Steve was thinking but he already knew of the parasite issue?
He continues his bear hunts and eating bear but perhaps learned a very important cooking survival lesson.
If you have no way to accurately measure internal grilled bear meat temperature in the field, don’t eat it.
Many Indigenous people of North America boiled or stewed bear meat. A few tribes roasted it on a spit but boiling long enough to stew and tenderize will kill both bacteria and parasites. See website below.
http://traditionalanimalfoods.org/mammals/bears/
Good Lesson!