Stillhunting Bears

[Nantahala Nut]

I've got a good opportunity to hunt black bear this fall.  My neighbor and I have access to a 400 acre property on a ridge.  They throw corn out for the hogs but this year it seems every bear on the mountain is hitting their pile.  I don't like to sit on bait but I will sure use that knowledge to stalk bears on their way in. Any advice from some bear hunters would be appreciated.

[Bill Carlsen]

If you don't like sitting over bait then find a trail that they use and sit on it at a distance where you feel comfortable.

[David McLendon]

Make sure that the distance that you sit from the bait is legal. Legal distance may be farther than you think, check the regs.

[Etter]

By the time bear season opens, they wont have any interest in a pile of corn. You need to find white oaks

[mangonboat]

I'll be interested to see how this works. I've got too many bears that are growing used to beating the sanitation crew to pick up my trash, coming into my garage if I leave the door open, and I've got an acorn mast that is making the limbs droop from the weight.

[David McLendon]

Originally posted by Etter:
By the time bear season opens, they wont have any interest in a pile of corn. You need to find white oaks

That's a fact, corn is a carbohydrate and they'll eat it because it's available just like running a garbage can line. But acorns are high fat that they can store and when acorns start falling they will concentrate on them.

[Etter]

If your area is similar to where I bear hunt in north ga, we have a heavy acorn crop. Makes things tough but seems like the best most loaded trees are up high. 2800 feet and up. Dont know when your season opens but we usually still hunt along white oak ridges and saddles and slip up on them while they are up in the trees. Just have to wait for them to climb down.

When I lived in Wisconsin, I got onto a bear one day glassing off a high rock moraine thing.  I kept that bear in sight through bogs around marshes, through heavy second growth, through open pine areas, I lost him on a private land berry operation and got caught eating blackberries.  I told them that I neglected to take water or sustenance with me on my bear chase and was not real sure where I was.  I was told to rest easy eat as many berries as I needed, I was handed a bottle of Coke, and was told to get that damn berry stealing bear at all costs.  Well, it got dark, I had no working flashlight, it came on in my pocket and killed the batteries.  Then the wind stopped blowing and it got cloudy, I was lost.  I walked into trees, I walked into water.  I heard a truck engine break and then back fire, I walked that direction and found a road and then walked miles down that road in the wrong direction.  Someone stopped asked if I needed a ride. I told him that I left my green Escort pickup on a logging road that was close to the moraine outlook, he said that he was hunting there and saw it. He brought me back to my pickup.  All of the other times I tried finding bears, I saw none. If I was to describe bears by what I saw that day, the description would be a fuzzy dark colored thing that goes from 0 to 60 in two jumps every time I got to anywhere near bow shooting range.