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Baiting in Bear Country...(advice needed)


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I have one spot in NJ where I bait.  This will be my second season at the spot.  I ran a mechanical feeder with no issues until a few months ago.  It died.  I replaced with a stump feeder (a gravity feeder).  A family of bears has found it.  The first week I went there, it was empty and the top was off.  I wasn't sure if it was bears so I re-filled it.  When I got home, I saw in my cam pics that it was a bear.  

 

I had already re-filled it...so I went back this week to check.  This time, it was empty and on it's side but the top was still on it.  Which seemed weird to me.  It appears to me a bear picked it up and just drank the corn like it was a soda from one of the holes.  

 

So.....

 

How do you guys who bait in bear country deal with this.  I'm guessing the best answer is to just drop corn on the ground and spread it a around....it seems like the bears only come when there is a bunch of food...they don't like to nibble.  Is that what you guys do?  

 

Just to be clear:  I'm baiting for whitetails....not bear.

Edited by dlist777
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I collect logs from the area I'm hunting, & stack them to form a "V" with whatever bait I use it's placed inside the "V" then more logs on top to cover the bait, in theory the bear should enter the "V" to eat the bait giving me a broadside/quartering away shot. I learned this from the bear outfitter I used a few times in Canada, and it worked like a charm on opening day of the archery hunt last year

 

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I collect logs from the area I'm hunting, & stack them to form a "V" with whatever bait I use it's placed inside the "V" then more logs on top to cover the bait, in theory the bear should enter the "V" to eat the bait giving me a broadside/quartering away shot. I learned this from the bear outfitter I used a few times in Canada, and it worked like a charm on opening day of the archery hunt last year

 

Thanks man.  That sounds like a great idea, but I'm baiting for whitetails.....  Hmmm.... maybe I'll get my bear tag this year. 

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I have one spot in NJ where I bait.  This will be my second season at the spot.  I ran a mechanical feeder with no issues until a few months ago.  It died.  I replaced with a stump feeder (a gravity feeder).  A family of bears has found it.  The first week I went there, it was empty and the top was off.  I wasn't sure if it was bears so I re-filled it.  When I got home, I saw in my cam pics that it was a bear.  

 

I had already re-filled it...so I went back this week to check.  This time, it was empty and on it's side but the top was still on it.  Which seemed weird to me.  It appears to me a bear picked it up and just drank the corn like it was a soda from one of the holes.  

 

So.....

 

How do you guys who bait in bear country deal with this.  I'm guessing the best answer is to just drop corn on the ground and spread it a around....it seems like the bears only come when there is a bunch of food...they don't like to nibble.  Is that what you guys do?  

 

Just to be clear:  I'm baiting for whitetails....not bear.

Well, you won't have to worry about baiting for bear after this fall, as it will be the last year for baiting bears, hunting bears with bow and arrow and possibly the last bear hunt for a while,  assuming that Phil "the leprechaun" Murphy is gov. Seeing as he must reward his socialist supporters.  Gee, maybe he will make firearms weapons of mass destruction and ban them like collyfornia did. 

 

Maybe he will make black bears a "species of concern" like DFW did with brook trout and they will need "protection" so they won't become extinct.   

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My advice would be to get another broadcast feeder and suspend it 10 or more feet above the ground with a cable strung between two trees. Use a pulley to raise and lower the feeder to refill.

That is the system our club uses and never had issues with bears dostroying the feeders.

 

 

I hang a cable between 2 trees 15' off the ground with a pulley attached to the cable.  I hang a timed feeder from the pulley.  

Do you guys still have bears coming to your bait site after you suspend your feeder like this?  Or do they lose interest if they can't get at the whole feeder's worth of corn...?

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Do you guys still have bears coming to your bait site after you suspend your feeder like this?  Or do they lose interest if they can't get at the whole feeder's worth of corn...?

 

Bears are usually not a problem with timed feeders that only drop a few pounds of corn each day, but it depends on the other food sources available in the area.  Occasionally there have been times when there was not other food in the area and bears will come to the feeder, but there are usually enough people dumping bait piles in the woods to keep the bears happy.   

Edited by Rusty
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Bears are usually not a problem with timed feeders that only drop a few pounds of corn each day, but it depends on the other food sources available in the area.  Occasionally there have been times when there was not other food in the area and bears will come to the feeder, but there are usually enough people dumping bait piles in the woods to keep the bears happy.   

 

 

The problem I had, in warren county, with timed feeder was bears trying to get inside and destroying the feeder in the process. The only way we were able to stop it was to hang it but they still tried very hard:-)

 

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After we switched to hanging feeder this bear was trying to pull it down with the rope used to lower the feeder:-)

 

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Edited by Lunatic
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The problem I had, in warren county, with timed feeder was bears trying to get inside and destroying the feeder in the process. The only way we were able to stop it was to hang it but they still tried very hard:-)

 

 

After we switched to hanging feeder this bear was trying to pull it down with the rope used to lower the feeder.  

 

 

Yeah they are smart,  if they are determined enough they will find a way to get most feeders.  

 

I haven't had a problem yet with my setup yet.  The cable is hung real high and the 2 trees are far apart so the feeder is nowhere near any trees.  The rope that lowers the feeder is also real long and I tie it off 20-30 yards uphill from the feeder.  I wrap it around a tree as high as I can reach before I tie it off.  

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Yeah they are smart,  if they are determined enough they will find a way to get most feeders.  

 

I haven't had a problem yet with my setup yet.  The cable is hung real high and the 2 trees are far apart so the feeder is nowhere near any trees.  The rope that lowers the feeder is also real long and I tie it off 20-30 yards uphill from the feeder.  I wrap it around a tree as high as I can reach before I tie it off.  

 

I have seen yours firsthand and they work where you have them.  I did mine a bit differently with a pulley about 17' up in an overhanging branch over to a second tree with a steel cable to clip it on a hook in the 2nd tree when pulled up.  They still figured it out and tore it apart and that was the end of my attempts to feed deer with corn in bear country.  If you do hunt over corn where bears are a problem and don't have a feeder, scatter it widely and more sparsely if you want deer to come in.  Otherwise expect long hours of staring at black as they randomly eat and then sleep on the pile under your stand.....

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Yeah they are smart,  if they are determined enough they will find a way to get most feeders.  

 

I haven't had a problem yet with my setup yet.  The cable is hung real high and the 2 trees are far apart so the feeder is nowhere near any trees.  The rope that lowers the feeder is also real long and I tie it off 20-30 yards uphill from the feeder.  I wrap it around a tree as high as I can reach before I tie it off.  

 

 

They never did get the hanging feeder :up:

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