Patience with Bears

Patience with Bears

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
When it comes to hunting bears, I know it is controversial to use bait. But in Idaho, it is totally legal and involves a considerable amount of work for my friend Jarrod Secundo because he has to haul about 1000 pounds of bait up into the wilderness every year. And that's not just in the back of a pickup. It means snowmobiling, four wheeling and sometimes just hauling it by foot. But once all of that work is done, waiting is the next step. "Typically if you set a bait you're definitely not going to see a bear on it for maybe a week. I mean there's certain areas you get used to certain areas you know there's bears there are certain times a year you might get lucky and get a bear on it right away. But I mean it's typically you know it takes a week especially that early in the spring, that high up in elevation. The bears aren't necessarily real active by the time we set bait. So we try to get in there early before the bears so that they already have they're already sniffing out the bait when they come into the area. So we kind of expect that to be a week to two weeks so so we don't monitor the bait too hard during that time. We'll just let him go in meaning the guy that owns property back there. He'll go he'll go check them every three or four days if they've been hit yet and will communicate via Internet. They've got internet up there. There's no cell coverage or phones or anything like that. But we'll communicate through email and he'll let me know if they've been hit and if they've been there relatively early then I'll make a little earlier trip up and do some hunting.
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