Why do people hunt bears? You could ask why do people climb mountains, jump out of perfectly good airplanes etc.
Everyone of those things is a challenge and different people enjoy different challenges. While i believe that God made most mountains with a walkable route to the top, that doesn't mean that others can't climb the cliff to the top.
Bear hunting is regulated like hunting other game animals are. Jurisdictions allow methods (unless morons were allowed to to vote to outlaw methods by referendum) that allow opportunity to harvest a bear and sometimes practised as traditional. There are millions upon millions of acres of land where one would never see a bear if techniques like baiting or hound hunting were not allowed. Both methods allow a discerning hunter to selectively harvest an old male. Neither are unfair to the bear and both are much harder than most people think. The work required to bait bear is very substantial. Keeping up to hounds is not easy, especially in rough terrain.
Everyone is welcome to choose to hunt, or not to hunt, any legal game animal they choose by any legal method they choose. For an armchair quarterback to question anyone's ethics or motivations for hunting a legal game animal by any legal method because they don't jibe with his/her opinions is unintelligent and deceiving oneself that their opinion is the only valid opinion.
One could argue that the armchair quarterback is leaning towards authoritarianism. I find that these debates, where hunters cannot support each other, play into the anti hunters hands. In case the AQ hasn't noticed, hunter numbers have been going down. The increasing urbanization of the continent means fewer people have any connection to the land or wildlife outside of TV or the zoo. A tactic I believe the antis have, and will use against hunters is to get us to fracture along our favorite animals and methods and techniques. If they can get us arguing against each other, then the hunting fraternity as a whole is weakened.
