Probably will sound obvious. My best west side luck has been locating a plentiful food source (berries, old rotten stumps that have grubs), with a water source nearby, that I can set up and watch (with the wind in my favor), adjacent to thick cover. The hard part I run into is, there’s tons of food. So I look for an area that holds a dense amount of berries, and has fresh sign. If I’m not seeing bear poop that’s fairly fresh, I’ll usually move on to another spot. The other issue I run into is terrain that’s hard to watch. I can think of one particular spot I hunt near with a steep hill covered in huckleberries. Lots of fresh sign. But because of the steepness, height of the brush, and lack of higher ground to look down into it, it’s damn near impossible to spot a bear in there.
Another tactic that paid off for me in the past was location an area with the above (food, cover, water) that surrounding pressure may funnel bears into. If there’s logging activities in the valley for example, I may hunt up on the ridge above it. If there’s Hunter pressure up in the hills, I may try to find a tucked away spot near a creek bottom that the bears might get pushed into. If there’s a natural barrier (steep canyon, gorge, etc) on one side, and pressure from hunters or logging activity on the other side, I’m going to find a spot in between.
In my experience, bears are lazy. Well, I should say they are efficient. They want to get food the easiest, safest means, without exerting any unnecessary energy if possible. If there’s a flat gated road with blackberries, huckleberries, salmon berries, salal berries, etc, they are probably going to use that road system early/late in the day, or at night. They probably won’t leave an easy food source to climb 2,000 vertical feet to access another food source, unless they’re feeling pressured. If it’s hot out (like next week) they may go up high to stay cooler, if everyone is down in the valley pounding the roads and creek bottoms. Last season the 2 bears I saw were up fairly high in the area I hunt (which usually isn’t the case). Heat, and tons of new hunters, pushed those bears up into some gnarly country.
I generally see the most bears on the west side mid October-early November where I hunt. November is crunch time for them, and they pound the berries if they’re still available.