Free: Contests & Raffles.
We did it a couple years ago. Don’t think I will be doing it again. We were in some absolutly beautiful area with decent glassing spots. The problem is, most of it it’s heavily timbered in those units and the bears don’t like to use them due to hunting pressure. We saw countless trucks driving the roads everyday with hounds in the back, and lots of trucks driving around with their bait setups in the back. From what I gathered is the bears aren’t in the open feeding due to all the baits everywhere, and the hound guys have them really skittish and away from any roads. We hiked into some really good looking country but it was void of bears I think due to my previous statements. If you are going to put in the effort, I suggest you run baits and put in a lot of time over there to be successful.
Well I was looking at reduced fee areas and we want spot and stalk opportunities. I see some areas in 4 that pop up as roadless areas on OnX. Would just finding those roadless areas be good? Doubt baiters or houndsman get much over a mile from a road. Or are any of the other reduced fee units better for spot and stalk? My buddies would be flying in from around the US so we just wanted a cheap fun lunch busting spring hunt.
I've got a trip planned with a buddy and our families to Stanley in mid May. We had talked about buying bear tags and spending a.day or two looking for one, is central Idaho the same way with hounds and bait being really prevalent?
I've been running bears and baiting for many years in unit 4. It's always been my favorite place to hunt but IDFG has ruined the bear hunting in the unit. Between the lengthened seasons, 2 bear limit and reduced tag prices the bear population has tanked. The last few years I have been lucky to have 2-3 bears hit a bait and last year only had 1 bear worthy of shooting and he was only there one night following a sow. Never touched the bait. The rest are 100-150 lbs tops with most closer to 100. The unit is so close to the freeway it just gets tons of pressure and everyone keeps shooting little bears to "do their part to save the elk". That said if I was looking to have a good spot and stock hunt I would look toward unit 1. It has the highest bear density in the state, no bait and hounds are only used in part of the unit in the fall. Units 6 and 7 are not bad and have areas you can get away from roads. They also are far enough out of the way most people won't spend the time to bait them consistently. My son and I camped and did some alpine fishing in unit 9 last summer. I did not see any sign of bears or many other critters.Early June is your best bet but really just depends on the snow melt. I've had years where I could get just about anywhere in the beginning of May. I had one year I camped up the CDA river and had over a foot of snow in my camp the first week of June and I was camped in the creek bottom.