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I hate bears.

Any of those bears make it into the freezer last year? I'd love to live closer to somewhere I could try to hunt one.
 
thedutchtouch said:
Any of those bears make it into the freezer last year? I'd love to live closer to somewhere I could try to hunt one.
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I had 2 real nice ones that hung around every day until the bear opener on the 15th. After that they were a fart in the wind until sometime around Nov 2nd. One went by like a train through thick cover and never presented a shot. One was close to 400 lbs. Hope he made it and shows back up
 
I've been running cameras in PA for two years without incident. Lucky for me they don't like the flavor of my cameras.
Just like you said, they dissappear once the season starts.
 
I was fortunate enough to get invited on a Bear Hunt to Ontario last week. I shot my 1st bear,and had my 1st encounters with bears in the wild. I never knew they were so quiet. I had one come right up to my tree from behind. I wouldn’t have known it was there until it snapped a twig.
 
I put my bait out on Friday. Hopefully it gets hit before next weekend. So far just raccoons and squirrels working it.
 
shmelton said:
I was fortunate enough to get invited on a Bear Hunt to Ontario last week. I shot my 1st bear,and had my 1st encounters with bears in the wild. I never knew they were so quiet. I had one come right up to my tree from behind. I wouldn’t have known it was there until it snapped a twig.
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Put your experience on the successful forum with pics! Please.
 
bigmike23 said:
I had 2 real nice ones that hung around every day until the bear opener on the 15th. After that they were a fart in the wind until sometime around Nov 2nd. One went by like a train through thick cover and never presented a shot. One was close to 400 lbs. Hope he made it and shows back up
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"I hate them" oh and I "hope he made it"... us hunters are a funny bunch :tearsofjoy: :tearsofjoy:
 
The area I live is chuck full o bears. The habitat here is ideal AND this is a region where problem bears from the burbs are relocated. We get alot of bears whose mamas taught them about scavenging neighborhoods instead of finding roots and grubs and nuts and seeds and such. The lucky ones figure it out but most of them work their way back to the burbs.

Small boxes on trees that smell like humans, are made of human materials, smell like the BLT you ate for lunch, have a little blinking red light to drawn attention AND don’t forget that little clicking and grinding shudder - which probably sounds like tasty bugs gnawing through wood - are just begging to be explored.



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Talk about quiet. It’s eerie how they can pad right by you. Or be lying in wait….. a few years ago during our gun season we had an overnight freeze. Walking to the stand was a crunch fest the whole way. I got up in the stand right before first light and as the day started to wake up and almost immediately after I settled into the stand, I hear crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch…. sounded like it was getting closer and closer, i couldn’t make anything out at all!
But the sound kept intensifying. My eyes are darting back and forth, frantically trying to see what I’m hearing….at first Im like this has to be a big buck so forthright I it’s movements, but it kept going… then I think…. It must be my buddy and something happened but he had a bunch of blaze orange on, still can’t see a thing, meanwhile CRUNCH, CRUNCH, CRUNCH…. finally I make out movement about 60 yards away along the ridge line…. A big ol black bear walking away….. then it occurred to me. That sucker waited for me to walk all the way into my stand, climb up and all that and then it started to move off. When I got down later he was only like 20 yards away the whole time!!! Talk about the hairs in the back of your neck going up!!!
 
Young bears are the worst. I used to own a farm that was covered up in them. If I ate a sausage biscuit on the drive down at 0700 in the morning and then hung cams at 1200 or whatever, that cam was going to get trashed by a bear within a week. Started washing hands in scent free soap before going to hang cams and then using latex gloves and the problems diminished greatly. I tried the small trees and it didn't work for me. Bear would just pull the whole tree down.
 
Farmer I know in northeast Ohio says a bear or bears rolled around and ruined ten acres of one of his corn fields.
 
Very easy to get a kill permit for bears in Virginia if they are destroying crops. Just call the local warden, show them the damage but it has to be crops that are planned for harvest, not foodplots.
 
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