Baiting black bears isn't as easy as it looks …

The black bear baiting season for Southcentral Alaska closed June 15. I've mentioned in previous columns about our efforts, my partner Doug and me, in getting out to bait black bears this year.

Since our bait site was on the west side of the Susitna River, in unit 16A, we initially had to wait for ice-out, then deal with extremely low water levels to get to the site and set it up. Our location was a new one, so we needed to attract black bears to a location the bears had not previously associated with food.

Once a bait site has been established and regularly tended, the bears become accustomed to looking for food there and will visit it frequently. This behavior gives the hunter the opportunity to observe the bears using the bait site and allows for a very selective harvest of a particular bear.

We got the bait station established on May 19. More than two weeks went by before the bears discovered its existence. We did three things differently in this initial period: First, on the advice of an experienced archer friend, we hung the bait barrel about four feet off the ground. This keeps little critters from getting into the bait and allows a better judgment of the size of any black bear seen feeding from the barrel. Second, after discovering no activity by early June, I disposed of the heads and viscera of the hooligan I had dipnetted a few days before into the bait barrel. And finally, when re-baiting with the hooligan scraps, I also left a bottle of commercial bear-baiting attractant scent open in a tree next to the barrel, rather than just splashing some into the scent bag hanging over the bait.

The first change made for a cleaner site and aided in judging bear size. The other two things, I think, are what finally triggered black bears to come visit the bait.

Another friend, on an earlier king salmon fishing trip, had observed both black bears and grizzlies along the river banks where hooligan were congregating. Since I had scraps, why not accommodate their taste buds?

The commercial attractant scent was some of the strongest smelling stuff I have found. I think the combination of hooligan and commercial scent odors floating around the area are what finally brought the bears in to visit. The first hit on the station saw 50 pounds of bait eaten, including chewing up the plastic scent bottle. We figure the bear(s) visiting the bait station were blacks because the critter also visited our elevated stand. The animal had climbed 12 feet up a birch tree to the one stand and knocked a folding stool off the platform and then moved over to my ladder stand and chewed up my seat cushion. Since grizzlies don't normally climb trees, this was probably a black bear.

I re-baited with another 50 pounds of dog food, opened the second bottle of attractant and sat on station until dark - nobody visited.

We didn't get back to check the station for three days, but when we did, the bear(s) had struck again with even more damage, including visiting the stand location. The bait barrel was empty and the cable holding it up was broken. The barrel was about half flattened on the ground. The plastic scent bottle was chewed up, and at the stand, the folding stool was on the ground and my seat cushion was chewed up even more.

We watched for a few hours but there was no activity. We pulled the station since the season was closing in a couple of days. We did not get a bear.

Next year, we're planning to be ready to camp out once bears show up. Our problem this year was not spending enough time on the stand after the bears were attracted to the site. One of these years, we'll put all the pieces together and get a bear!

Howard Delo is a retired fisheries biologist living in Big Lake.