Some hunters should be whacked alongside the head!

Pops,

I object to the derogatory way you used the name Nimrod. He was a biblical king and a mighty hunter. Some accounts have him as a good guy and others as a bad one.

Sorry about the cubs but nature is harsh. If your mother dies before you are ready, you die too. If you get hurt and can't hunt you die. If something higher than you on the food chain gets ahold of you it's all over.

I don't want to get in an argument over baiting but I do believe in following the game laws.

Its not hypocritical for me to feel its wrong...

So you have done everything that you have an opinion about LOL
Whats your opinion on drinking & driving, gang activity, dead beat dads..

My ancient ancestors thought that it was right and so did your ancestors. Those who didn't think that it was right didn't leave any descendants!

Martin

No, but it's uninformed to think you can go out and "track down" a bear to kill.

Whether you "agree" or not, baiting is legal in many states.

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Ah ok, I always heard it was illegal to do that, I didn't know other states allowed it

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What is real and what is perceived is completely different. Without threadjacking I will stick to the original subject of this post. Black bear hunting would be illegal if it were not becessary to control the population. Mans ever presence in the bears environment is real. The bears have gone nocturnal and reside in the thickest nastiest thickets they can find. In order to maintain population control, baiting is a necessary evil.

In Alaska, the bear population is out of control in many areas. Even with increased hunting pressure and more liberal regulation. Most people have a policy of "If it is brown, it is down".



This game camera pic is within 75 yards of my cabin.

And no, I didn't fall for your bait.

To play devils advocate, those ancient ancestors had to hunt or die, that was just the way of life back then. They also had to get all the advantages on the bear that they could, seeing how they didnt have high powered rifles or scopes or anything lol

Try killing one with a few rocks and pointed sticks

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Recognize the beauty in things, in creation, even when thats difficult to do.
Be loving, show compassion. Create while we're here.
Enjoy this life, be in this life but not be of it.

Why cant you?

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Recognize the beauty in things, in creation, even when thats difficult to do.
Be loving, show compassion. Create while we're here.
Enjoy this life, be in this life but not be of it.

you can in some places. out west there is little understory and open meadows on the moutnains so there are opportunities to spot & stalk. on the east coast it just isn't possible due to the density of undergrowth where the bear populations reside. for example i remember spending an hour moving 800 yds in a coastal carolina swamp during a DROUGHT year. two years before in a regular year, a trio of teens tok the same amount of time to cover 400 yds and half of that was on tunnels the bear tore through the undergrowth. in fact the undergrowth is so thick you could sit in a tree stand 8 ft off the ground and not be able to see a 300# bear moving directly beneath you. this is the most extreme area i've seen but not by much. in these places it is necessary to either bait them into a clearing or runn them with dogs. i prefer dogs because i feel it mimics natural predation pressures that help maintain the health of the local population. i also feel that baiting is unhealthy because it may put the bears on an unbalanced & unhealthy diet, as well as concentrating them in a small area increasing the spread of disease.

Cousin's son shot a boar bear about this time in 2008 which field-dressed at 325# and estimated 400# live. 26 yards with a bow and arrow. Front paws almost a foot wide. I still have some of the meat in my freezers.

Communicable diseases among bears are not as much of an issue as it is with deer. And, bears are not very communicable by nature.

Martin

They did lots of things that would get them ten to twenty in a hardcore prison.

I often call on my ancestors.
I have strong hunter-gatherer genes.
If someone really wants to eat bear, that's alright with me.
From my experience, few actually do.
For me, the law is~ You kill it, You eat it!
I'm a predator, and I respect the ones left in our world.
That's what I was taught at a very young age.

We have an estimated 20,000 black bear here. You are only allowed to hunt over bait. Hounds would be killed by wolves if they were ran. You are never going to track and find a bear in our forests, they are too thick. To those who think hunting over a bait pile is guaranteed success here are a couple facts. The highest success rate ever in the last 10 years has been 43% of hunters filled there tags and that was in 1995. Last year 9689 license were sold, 2699 bears were taken, which means only 28% harvest rate. Its not as easy as one would think.

P.S. Bear meat is one of the last vectors of Trichinosis in these United States.
If you have bear meat in your freezer after 3 years, it strikes me, you don't have much of an appetite for it.

Does that mean that you wouldn't eat a bear? They are called boars and sows for a good reason as I think that it's very much like pork. There's a lot of bear hunters in this state, MN, and the UP. I'd be willing to go out on a limb and say that 99.9% of them utilize the meat for human consumption. It's not cheap to get a permit and everyone whom I have ever known to apply are serious about it and have arrangements for the meat long before they leave for the hunt. If they aren't into eating it themselves, either they or a local outfitter will have plans for the meat. I was just about at the end of my coon hunting years when there were confirmed bear sightings in my hunting area. Each night out had me prepared to figure out what to do with an awful lot of meat if it came down to either me or the bear!

Martin

Note that I said freezers? I have two as well as two refrigerators. We're still working on ground venison packed in bulk from 2005 and 2006! (Gallon Ziplocks with 7½# per bag.) About 40 pints of canned venison and 6 or 7 pints of rabbits on hand, several snapping turtles, and probably at least 50# of chicken, pork, and seafood from special sales. At 325# dressed, that was close to twice the biggest buck I ever shot. Didn't mention what my share of the bear was but with probably 500# of meat on hand, the bear percentage doesn't end up on the menu but maybe once a month or so? We don't keep track, we just live to eat!

Might add that the same lad that shot the big bear recently took his bow and arrows and stuck a lot more meat and never even thought of letting me know that it was available. Don't know what all he got but he sent pictures of a wart hog, eland, and a bok. Would have been a bit of a problem for me as he shot them in Namibia!

Martin

In my opinion, that meat's too old to interest me.
My suggestion, if you are bringing in that much meat every year- offer last year's meat to a soup kitchen, or other charitable group.

Myself, I'm not interested in going to another continent to kill creatures which will probably not be here in the next century.

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I would. Once bear season winds down the bread stores will have plenty of left over bread and some restaurants still give away used grease. Also, fishing resorts have hundreds of pounds of fish waste that they have to pay to dispose of during fishing season. I pick up a couple hundred pounds of fish waste from one resort for coon bait every few weeks and that's only part of their waste and just one resort.

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And just how many years have you been hunting Free Range Big Game Animals?

This in its self makes for a very long debate with people that don't know nothing about hunting or control of some animals or care until they are destroying their Garden or Ripping the Guts out of their Child.

From one that uses Dogs,Bait and when I can afford it a Guide.Oh I some times hunt High Fence also when I can afford it.

Said my .02 on this carry on i have no more to say.

big rockpile

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