September--it was one of those sunny, but long sleeves and sweater feel-good kind of days. Between sitting in the warm Minnesota sun and eating a lunch that started a glow in your insides, a guy began to feel kind of lazy, even though he knew the air was just chill enough to be uncomfortable if he were trying to take a nap.
After three years of applying, my partner, Jan Manning, and I had drawn bear licenses and made the trip from Colorado. We had spent the morning checking the bear baits that our mutual friend, Mark Cook, had started for us. All four had been "hit" again--for the sixth day in a row--and we had yet to see a bear. Jan and I looked at each other, glanced toward the falling sun, and remarked that we'd best be at it if we expected to see a bear.
Lunch hadn't been much, just some sandwiches of thin-sliced beef, Swiss cheese and mustard on wheat bread, some potato chips, a couple of "Granny Smith" apples (the crisp, tart, greens ones with enough juice to run down your chin if you're not careful), a Coke and some homemade chocolate chip cookies made by Mark's wife, "Chuck," but when you're out in the woods and have spent the morning hiking about, that sort of food seems like a culinary experience equal to any five-star eatery.
The baits had been set up at various locations in the Chippiwa National Forest that were accessed via forest service roads and were about 10 miles apart from the first to the last. Each one was one-half to three-fourths of a mile off the road, and the bait had to be carried in by hand. In Minnesota, baits usually consist of a small depression in the ground, where the bait is placed, with logs that are six to eight inches in diameter and four to six feet long stacked on top of it. This serves two purposes: First, it keeps the smaller animals, such as raccoons, coyotes, even wolves, from getting at the bait and second, lets the hunter know that it was indeed a bear that has visited the bait.
Anyone who says that baiting bears is not sporting, has probably never tended baits or sat on a stand for hours on end without moving! Lugging five-gallon buckets with bait to a location as much as three-fourths of a mile from the road is tiring and sitting in the stand can be worse. Baiting also allows for close scrutiny of any bear that comes in and allows a hunter to be selective about the animal he chooses to take. When a hunter can only "jump shoot" bears, as in my native Colorado where baiting and chasing of bears with hounds is illegal, it's a case of shoot quickly.
The chances of shooting a sow with cubs, for instance, is much greater if the hunter sees only a lone bear, shoots it, and then finds out it's a sow with cubs. Such laws (ours was created by referendum vote, not by sound wildlife management principles) are a case of false economy and are actually self-defeating. Such is often the case with "emotional" game management. In reality, we now shoot more sows with cubs than we ever did--almost 600 percent more!
© 2012 InterMedia Outdoors