Bear bait?

Oneye

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I have a black bear hunt coming up and you can use bait. I'm just wondering what are the best baits for black bears and what works the best?
 
Thanks guys. Im also wondering. I can set up 2 bait sites and am thinking about doing 1 treestand and one ground blind. My question on that is, will the Bears eat apart my ground blind if I use it? I would just set it up for a couple weeks to get them used to it but I wonder if they'll tear it up.
 
I wouldn't leave a ground blind set up. If you get any scent from your bait on it bears will tear it up, I'd use tree stands
 
I wouldn't leave a ground blind set up. If you get any scent from your bait on it bears will tear it up, I'd use tree stands

I do have 2 tree stands. I just have a friend who would like to film it and he is a little big for the treestand. I'm guessing the bears would be very weary of the blind if I set it up the day I hunt. I also have heard to leave a shirt or something with your scent in the area so the Bears get used to you scent and are less weary of it. I plan on using sweets for my main bait, does anyone have any tips on what to use to originally pull the Bears in to find your bait? Do you need something smellier than donuts and sweets to get them to find the bait?
 
If you know a trapper or can get into contact with one get some beaver castor glands. Chop them up. Put them into a gallon jug of hot water and shake it up really well. Beaver tails cut into small pieces and placed into glass jars will render into an oil. These are what I use for attracting scents. The smell carries very far if splashed up onto trees around your site. Once you smell it you'll see why. At the site I will use meat at one site. I use beaver carcasses. Call your local meat packing plants and ask about guts too but make sure they are legal animals to use. Then at another site I use sweet rolls, sugar, jelly doughnut filling, etc. At the third I will use 3 way grain and used fryer oil. You can call fast food places and ask what they do with it. Now these are at least a mile apart. A bear in the area may eat out of one and walk away. If he decides he really likes one of those offerings he will come back again and again.
 
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No to ground blind, it will be destroyed, and if you have a padded seat on your tree stand that will be destroyed as well. Been in the tree stand a few times where I had to knock off the bear dung in order to sit. Also If the bears don't bother anything the squirrels certainly will.
 
Can tell you that several bottles of liquid smoke poured on stumps and logs in an area will draw them in.
 
Bears will chew up anything near the bait. My cameras go in wood boxes with screws sticking out they still get spun around and played with. They chewed a good chunk out of my home made ladder stand last spring
 
I have taken a pound of bacon and a portable stove and just fried the bacon on high until it is black and cooked to hell ( use a garage sale pan not your goodstuff.) all the oil and smoke sticks to the trees and leaves a scent trail to the bait.

Adam J
 
can you build a ground blind with some fallen logs, brush, ect... won't have a roof but then if they tear into it nothing lost
 
I always saved all my sardine oil (I eat a lot of them) I usually had a couple of peanut butter jars full. I stored them in the freezer while filling them. Thaw them and pour the oil on whatever bait you're using. Draws them in from long distances.
 
You can use anything really. You just need to have it out there long enough for them to become accustom to it. It's not something you setup over night, bears are smart. If you can find beaver carcasses you can run a line between to trees and string it up. Just make sure they have a hard time reaching it.
 
We used ground blinds last year. Never had a problem with the bears messing with the ground blinds as long as there was bait for them to eat. We were baiting every other day for two weeks and the blinds sat there the whole time. After my daughter killed her bear we left the site for three days so the bears could clean up the bait. once the bait was gone they went after the blind. They broke 14 of the 20 poles, ate the netting and pretty much destroyed it. I wouldn't hesitate to leave a blind there as long as you are keeping it baited. But if you let the bait run out, they will eat anything.
 
We used to bait in the N. Fork Clearwater. We just used the cheapest dog food we could buy and had a local restaurant save us their old fryer grease. It was in a cube shaped plastic jug. We packed in with horses where we hunted so those things were easy to pack. We would dig a hole maybe a couple of feet deep and to start maybe half fill the hole with dog food and dump some grease on top. We would cover it with deadfall so they had to work a little. Outside of the hole we would mix grease in with the dirt so that there was a pad that they would stand in and then track that scent everywhere they went. We would also make a little fire each time we baited and burned a little grease in the fire so that smoke would travel in the wind. Usually within a couple of days we would have bears hitting it. Once they were there I would only put maybe half a 5 gallon bucket of food and grease in the hole. I think it created competition and forced the bigger bears to show in daylight hours, so they could get the goodies before some little Boo-Boo did. We would kill multiple bears from those baits. Of course we were hunting unpressured bears which might have made a difference, but it worked good for us.
 

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