aroostookbasser's Link
Look for food sources: berries- raspberries/blackberries acorns/beechnuts Standing corn fields Apples
Look for trails coming to or from these food sources. Follow these trails into the woods and look for a small opening in the otherwise dense growth. This clearing or meadow/glade will act as your trial site.
Burn some honey in a pie plate with a propane torch and smoke it up good. Leave a bucket of baked goods hanging from a good tree in that open area. Be sure to spread grease/maplesyrup/ fryolator oil on the ground all around the bait bucket. Any bear that come in will pick up that stuff and track it all over the woods. It will lead any other bear that finds that scent...right back to the bait.
Give it 24 hours and come back in the next day with a cable and a bucket predrilled to hang on the cable without using the wire handle. If your bait has been hit remove the old bucket...mount the cable with the bucket strung on it between two good trees at about 6 feet high. That insures the little bears can't reach it and it will deter most bait thieves like raccoons too. Be sure to anchor the cable securely at both ends to avoid having the bears pull it down.
REFILL BUCKET WITH GOODIES AND SPILL A LITTLE MORE OIL AROUND THE AREA.
The next day when you come in and you are still getting hit....you need to locate a stand site near the bait but back far enough to keep from spooking the bears. If you are gun hunting you can go back a good 50 yards as long as you have a good line of sight. For bows you can only move back about 15 to 20 yards at most. Do any trimming at this time, leave the bait and get out.
Once you have bears coming in and you have located a good stand site ...get it in place ASAP. Rebait the site and leave. Bears may be spooked by the scent coming off the treestand. But continued feedings will get them used to it.
Prior to actually hunting the stand you need to scent -train the bears. Bring along a sweaty tshirt and put it up in the treestand so they smell you all the time. Go back to daily feedings for two days after that..before you try to sit the stand. Then now when you actually come in bait the site and go up in the stand...the bears are used to your continued scent and will be less alarmed to smell you.
If you are sharing the site...you must introduce a second scent prior to the hunt. The best way to do that is bring along others when you bait. The bears will get used to you being the constant scent and other scents will not be so strange and alarming.
I have had bears so used to my activities that they actually waited for me to come each day...followed me into the bait..staying just out of site(but could hear them and glimpse them periodically). Then would wait for me to leave or in one case followed me back out to my vehicle. Then returned to the bait and had a good feed.
I've been bear hunting for about 35 years.... and write about it all the time on my site. Google my handle/nickname and you will see a lot of good info is out there if you are looking.
