9-28 SS Bear-Dog Hunts

 Smokey Canyon Outfitters in Star Valley Wyoming takes hunters on bear and lion hunts in Idaho and Wyoming. Outfitter Ryan Merritt talks about hunting methods that some feel are controversial. “In Wyoming and in Idaho both, the bears we run with dogs in Idaho and do baits usually if a guy is open to running dogs we will hunt baits in the evening and dogs in the morning. We are allowed to bait in both states and we cannot use the dogs in Wyoming. We also do a lot of lion hunts with our hounds in the fall and winter months. How do the dogs get involved? What do you do? Hunting black bears on the Idaho side with the dogs, depending on the person, some people have a big problem with the use of hounds. Most of those people have never been out and used the hounds at all. They all see the bear or lion in the tree and the gun go off and that’s all they see, they don’t realize the blood sweat and tears it takes to get that animal in the tree. As far as using those dogs it is just a total different array of hunting, the miles they can put on. We have a lot of heart ache. We lose dogs to these bears and a lot of the bigger bears go nocturnal. They won’t even come into these bear baits until dark so it is really one of the only ways that you can get those bigger bears because they just are not coming in to the bait wary hunter can harvest them. By using the dogs, they can actually get them in and get them caught.