Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Why do people hunt bears?

Because they're delicious.

What moosemike said !

LOL!

You’ll just die tired.

Nope make them come earlier! After the site has been established and you are hunting it. Packout the bait every night when you leave the stand. Leave a few scraps for them. This will condition them to get to the bait earlier. Dog food is an ok filler, but I give them the goods mixed in old donuts, pies, whatever you can get a good quantity of. If you have generic bait they may or may not hit it as regularly. Give them what they really want. Make your bait stand out. Also spray the bait site with vanilla. When establishing a bait site pack in cooking grease and spread it all around. This will get tracked up by small critters and bears and leave scent trails to your bait site.

better start training! when you can go from start to 35 mph and hold it for a mile you might not end up a pile of steaming bear crap.

i have many times stepped out from behind a tree on purpose to startle a blackie and almost every time they disappear so fast i am not sure which direction they went other then at me. suckers are fast and agile.
why do we hunt them?
1. keep them from destroying our garden.
2. keep them from destroying our out buildings, smokehouse etc.
3. keep them from destroying our orchard.
4 keep them from destroying the fawn crop
5 they make the best smokies you will ever eat
6. they make very nice rugs and even coats.
7. on foot in their living room where they know every blade of grass and can smell you a mile away you are confronting your feeble manhood by going against something that can make you amount to [bleep] contrary to the people that always said you wouldnt amount to [bleep]. win, win bear hunting.
and thats just cuddly lil ole black bears.
oh yeah! some of the best comadey i have ever watched was a black bear that was clueless he was being watched.
love black bears!!!!

I love bear hunting!!!

next thing you will be hunting Bambi , we really should protect holywood animals ( end sarcasm )

A response to the original poster and Fireball2, In northern Wisconsin , you will be hard pressed to see a bear all season without bait. The spend much of their time in Tagelder swamps and lay in the water to stay cool. I have owned land in NW Wisconsin for 30 yrs and hunted there several yrs before that . I have seen one bear in 32 gun and bow seasons there. Although, I dont hunt there much anymore , but still , one bear while hunting and 1 crossing the river once and I spent a good amount of time there. If you spot and stalk in Wisconsin, you will likely need to be inside 20yds and on the ground to boot. Matter of fact, my brother saw one 20 yrs ago sitting over some corn while taping deer. This makes 3 bear sightings in 30 yrs between several people. You will almost never see a bear in the woods trying to sneak up on them. It is hard to get a shot inside of 20 yds. Now, on the subject of baiting. You dont think an old bear just comes up to a bait pile do you? I know for certain, when a big bear comes in. The circle about 100 yds downwind. They circle in a bit closer, and it wont be long before he crosses your path and that nose will tell him not to go in till dark. They are as smart as any wild critter out there. Sometimes, a big bear does not come down wind, but almost always does. If you dont have everything right over a bait pile, you will see very few bears, if any. We hunt the in September and leaves are still on. The land is flat as can be, no hills , no open areas, no shots past 20 yds. If you can see a bear farther than 20 yds , you might be hunting in too open of an area and they likely wont come in till dark. Now, you also have other baiters and some years, if you have lots of acorns , mushrooms or berries, they shun bait piles. It's not nearly as easy as it seems.

wasn't there a lady cop stripper named bambi?

Most people hunt them to kill em. Some eat them. When I lived in Alaska in the early 70s they collared a bunch of moose calves. Mortality rate was very high and about 80 percent were black bear kills. Good enough reason right there. Edk

I hunt bear around natural food sources. I could hang a tree stand and sit waiting for a bear. It would be the most brain numbing boring hunt I can imagine. To sit over a barrel of donuts is not hunting. But it may be more interesting than sitting on a natural food source. Bear is the best wild game meat we can put in our freezer here. I will continue to hunt them like I hunt deer.

This will be my first year going out for spring bear. I never really gave them much consideration til a friend who runs cows in the mountains, complained that he lost his favorite cow to a bear last year. The numbers are over ideal and as a conservationist, I think it is the sportsman’s obligation to help.
Mother Nature functions with extreme boons in populations and die offs. I think the conservationist should help moderate that population.
We don’t have baiting, but I don’t judge anyone that uses it to regulate a population.
This idea that the animals all fraulic when man is not around is troubling.

my wife makes a killer bear stew

That bear we ate this winter sure was good cooked over the fire!

Are you retarded or just liberal?

Probably neither. For a lot of people this is a legitimate question especially if you're not familiar with customs in other places. Many people don't even think of bear meat as being edible and the concept of hunting over bait is not considered ethical in many places. And it is my understanding that in many parts of Canada there are so many bear they are considered pests. Probably things the OP never knew.

To the OP. Here in GA we have a 10 deer/year limit with a 5 month season. And those taken on WMA's don't count against your limit. It is theoretically legal to take 20+ deer in a year here. To many guys in other parts of the country that probably seems unsporting when they are happy to get one tag and have a 5-10 day season.

I've hunted over bait before, as well as with dogs where legal. Personally I don't enjoy that type of hunting, but have no issues with those who do as long as it is legal and the custom where they live. I've killed one bear and it was the highlight of my hunting career to take one hunting in my home state of GA. While not a worlds record by any stretch it was considerably larger than typical for GA. I didn't care much for the meat, maybe I need to find a better way to prepare it. I have no regrets about taking the one, but wouldn't specifically set out to take another. But if a big one came along while deer hunting I might take it. Might not, it would depend on my mood and how hard it would be to get out.

Baiting is not customary here in GA, but within the last few years has been legalized for deer on private land. Not for bear, but I'm not sure how you tell the bear not to come to the feeders. Baiting is not allowed on public land, where most of GA's bear are. But it gets done a lot. I hunt on a lot of mountain public land in GA with good bear populations. I find a LOT of empty sardine cans left in the woods. I just can't see that many hunters eating sardines for lunch.

Im going with retarded

Difference?

I was able to get this picture from a friend who can talk to bears on a personal level. This is a picture of "the bears" softball team at the rocky mountain playoffs. That sleepy looking fella in the middle is the best catcher ever to play the game. I think his name is Yogi Beara

Yeah, gotta love the whiners shooting dinks and sitting wwwaaaayyy behind them to get the "right" picture badmouthing everyone else.