In the interest of honesty in this open, transparent and caring community, I will confess that I saw a bear at 8:15 AM last Wednesday. After sleeping in, some bear hunters and I were on our way to get some coffee and breakfast in town rather than eat our own cooking, and the medium large bear was on a river gravel bar a mile from our camp.
Spent four days in bear country and saw 11 bears. We usually started hunting about 9:00 AM so am guilty of not looking for them in early morning. Besides the one at 8:15 AM I saw one at 1:30 PM, one at 3:15 and eight after 7:00 PM, including three in a five minute span. The bears exist at dawn, but are seldom in a place to glass, nor do they appear very active early in the day. Not sure how well they would respond to calls in that inactive state, but have seen bears at leisure look longingly at a call sound, sigh and slump down where they are. A man could find a brush patch with bear sign and crawl in amongst 'em at dawn.