Free: Contests & Raffles.
Thing is, it all depends on the time of season and foods available. I target high elevation sloped rocky, blue berry layden and grassed meadows because it's easier to glass for them there. Are they down at other tighter forested areas eating cascara sprouts, ripping apart stumps for worms and grubs, digging out bee hives, eating grasses and skunk cabbage, black, salmon and huckle berries, grouse and weazels or other rodents other times of the year? YES! Bears in the southwest or Willipa hills really don't have the alpine slopes that bears in the Mount Baker or Stevens pass areas do, so, a hunter is best to find what food is ripe that bears eat and target those areas. I'll bring up my most recent bear sighting.. In Pasayten around 7,500' in late September. There were still some scrub huckleberries 1,500' below him but most other berries were long gone. Grasses available, but what was he doing? Turning over rocks looking for rodents like Marmots and Pika or weezels. He's trying to fatten up before winter. But earlier in the month you'd still see him eating berries and such. Before that, grasses and grubs. All that larva that was burrowed deep in a stump during winter/spring. That's his food in the spring. Along with any fawn they come across. More over, they are oportunists. They wander, and eat what they find along the way. You might see a bear eating cascara or blackberries one day in a creak draw full of cover, then the next he's ripping a stump apart in a clearcut. -Steve
