Bear bait?

[AMBUSH OUTFITTERS BC]

Skittles and candy that must make some tasty bear meat.

[whacker1]

how far from the road are you guys packing this stuff?  I have looked at some places in Idaho, but wouldn't want to pack it in there.  And then back out.

[cohoho]

We used to hit it extremely hard in AK on two sites.  Each site had a large 70 gallon (Metal) over pack barrel.  Each site, during the baiting season, went through about 1000lbs of dog food, 50 gallons of cooking grease, 10 gallons of molasses, sugar, half a truck bed of day old stuff (bread, cup cakes, etc..) from the hostess factory, and every left over cake, cookie, turkey, barbecue, veggies, fruits we could get our hands on and stored in the freezer during the year.  One good year we had left over NBC bomb shelter hard tack candy in 88 lbs metal boxes....  Hard work getting it going but some of the funnest times we would have with the kids and friends..  We'd drop it off the first week of May and never took a bear from our stands till the 16th of May, and totally lights out the first week of June..  The bears wouldn't eat the dog food and other stuff till their plugs came out, then holy crap keeping it full was a problem...  Especially when a Griz or two would decide to camp out..... A 5 gallon honey drip always hung above to keep them always near.  They started excavating the entire area within a ten yard circle, we got lucky as there was never nothing to clean...  I miss baiting, it is a blast.  Good luck to all of you that are able to do it in Idaho and elsewhere.. 

[Skyvalhunter]

Coho did you ever have any issues with bears when you were restocking your bait station?

[cohoho]

A couple of times for sure.  It was always scary as you weren't sure what was near.  Big and Brown wasn't what I wanted to see blurring towards me for sure...  My son shoot two right off the barrel as we walked up on separate occasions...  We had a system that seemed to work and I think the bears were really close, we would pull the boat up and two of us would always walk up 50 yards from Kenai Lake to either bait or position someone in the stand, kind of an overwatch approach, then the other would back over the hill to the boat and start up and leave and be out in the middle waiting for the shot.  Alot happened 30-45 minutes after the boat left on most occasions... 

Sad part was a guy gave me the stand after he ran it for 8 years, we did it for another 6 or so, the bears were super conditioned, now nobody is baiting there to my knowledge...     

[Skyvalhunter]

Wow thats pretty interesting. Yea I imagine the hair on the back of a guys neck would stand up a time or two. Its always cool to watch those guys baiting in Canada even if it is mostly for black bears.

[cohoho]

If I could figure out how to do it and down load a 8mm film to You Tube.  But I got cool footage of a Momma Black bear with two ankle biters eating away for about 25 minutes.  Her huffing and them scrambling away and three minutes later a young Griz comes drooling and nervous like nothing else only to get Huffed out by another larger Griz a few minutes later.  My buddy sat on the stand one night and had a Momma Black Bear tussle and not let down on a young Griz that eventually ran away while she stayed and ate with her young...  Worst night - there were three Griz at my buddies stand and two at mine at the same time.  5 within a 1/2 mile of each other pucker factor was high for sure.  He called on the radio while me and my son were trying to scare these two off the stand so we could get out and back to the boat.  Then I had to go to his stand and also assist in scaring them away from his stand while he exited back to the boat.  For those that will state should have shot the Brown Bear- it is illegal to off a bait station and huge tremendous fines in AK for action like that and if you got a bait station registered and all of a sudden your bringing in a brown bear for sealing, they will check your station out for sure or atleast attempt to do so...  Kind of hard to get a 500-700lbs brown bear back without taken the hide off for transporting... Alot get caught each year...