My past four seasons I've been wanting to bow kill a black bear. A while back we put this feeder up because we couldn't get any trail cam pics there on this ridge where the deer were moving like crazy. Well we remembered putting the feeder there and just dropped some corn in it just to see if that would help with the trail cam but ironically forgot to put the trail cam up. We came back today to check it (been about 4 days) and the feeder was knocked over, pan was knocked over, and was scratches around. We assumed it to be a turkey and walked about 10 yards and there was a pile of black bear crap. We had been seeing signs of a larger animal coming around that ridge, but I just figured it was tracks from other hunters or something. I'm pretty desperate to kill this bear, does anyone have bear tips? Time of day or maybe something to draw the bear in?
Evenings have always been best for me. Baked good and cookies as well as candies are good baits. If it is legal beaver carcasses work great. I use liquid smoke as an attractant as well as anise. The powder from Jello has worked as well. Good luck.
Peanut butter works great, never used syrup but molasses mixed with some old donuts or baked goods would be best! Anise can work good to draw them in to the food as well. I usually sit for about 3 hours and leave at dark. If you have any other questions don't hesitate to ask!
If you can bait we can sort you out easy. I ran a bear hunting business for 12 years and took 40 bears a year for my hunters. Here are a couple from this season without bait. This oregon bear was 507lbs and 78" long with a 53" girth. the skull was 20-12/16 This Washington bear was 464 lbs, 68" long 54" girth and 20-10/16" skull shot him 9 days later 250 pounds about 3 years old. He will need to grow for about 5 more years to get over 20" We had 33 bears come past this tree stand in 7 days of hunting. Without a trail camera you're gonna struggle to know when to sit, or what you're looking for. Once you have the times down they stay quite consistent if you can bait. I can show you how to build an automatic self feeder that is bear proof and will supply food for about 5-8 days. depending of course how many bears are there.
So I've came up with a strategy. You can't bow kill a bear until the 15th of October here. I'm not sure why, but you can't. For the next few days I'm going to go up to that path every three days and lay down sweets: peanut butter, marsh mellows, maple syrup, molasses, old cereal, etc. just going to clean out my cabinets and every 3-5 days I'm going to keep checking my trail cam for the results. By the end of October the bear should be visiting that trail a little more consistency and when the trail camera tells me what time the bear is visiting, I'm just going to smoke him.
Just a heads up, read in wv regs that baiting and feeding bear is illegal. Looks like I will just be trying to pattern mine.
Predator calls work extremely well on bears. They are very curious by nature. The thing to be aware of though is that they're coming in expecting to kill something or steal food from someone else... and they are SILENT when they come in.
AKA bring a slow hunting partner, be vewwy vewwy quiet, and don't leave your tree stand for a while after calling!
