Outdoors in Alaska

Baiting black bears isn’t as easy as it looks….

The black bear baiting season for Southcentral was closing in a couple of days. I’ve mentioned in previous columns over the years about our efforts, my hunting partner and myself, in getting out to bait black bears.

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 new location was a different one from previous years, 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 relocated bait station established in mid-May. Over two weeks went by before the bears discovered the existence of the site. 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 provided for a cleaner site and easier cleanup. It would have aided in judging bear size had we seen any. The other two things, I think, are what finally triggered black bears to come visit the bait.

Another friend, on an earlier salmon fishing trip, observed both black bears and grizzlies along the riverbanks where hooligan were congregating. Since I had the dipnetted hooligan 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 figured 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 didn’t get a bear.

Our problem that year was not spending enough time on the stand after the bears were attracted to the site. However, I did have some interesting experiences while on stand. One year, I watched a mother martin and a half-dozen of her kits playing around the bait barrel and investigating the smells for a half-hour before losing interest and moving on. Another time, I had a cow moose walk within ten feet of my stand before smelling bear scent and running off in the opposite direction.

Next year, we’re planning to be ready to camp out once bears show up. One of these years, we’ll put all the pieces together and get a bear!