Bears at deer bait

Bulldog26

Bulldog26

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Location
NB
So heres the situation... I have a rickety old ground blind about 30-40 yards away from my apples....Made of pallets and tar paper mostly. I have deer and bear coming to the bait. If i'm in the blind, and a bear comes in, whats the best thing to do? Wait for him to finish? hollar at him? or fire a shot to scare him off? Concerned of him eating all my apples, and scaring the deer away, but also about him getting curious of us while we're in the ground blind (the door is held closed by a string)

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There's food at your food bait site!

Bears are hilarious, I'd just stay quiet and get a camera rolling on them. They are after cheap calories, not scary human encounters. If they get too close, make a little noise to warn them there's someone nearby so you aren't jumping out at them. 99 times out of 100 they'll just run off to find the next pile of cheap calories if they aren't scared for their lives. If you scare them too much, "fight" response might overtake "flight" and then you need to put them down, but I've never had to do that. Just shuffle your feet and clear your throat if they wander near. Stomp a little and cough if they wander really near. Boop their snoot and shout "f@ck off, bear!" if they start rooting through your lunch.

Or, yeah, get a tag and put one in your freezer. Tasty!
 
Not everyone wants to hunt bear so if you don't no worries. If that's the case just enjoy watching the bear, not like you get to see a black bear up closer very often. If not check the hunting regs and get a tag.
 
Seeming to be a common theme here- my response would be the same as above; buy a tag, kill a bear, make some hams, surprise all your friends with just how tasty an apex predator can be :)

You can scare a bear off, but of course you'll scare everything else off as well.

Your best bet is to set baits that bears are less inclined to eat, such as hay, or salt-based attractants. With that being said, bears really do love free food, so if there's bears in the area, they're likely always going to hit your baits. Good news is that they're generally hibernating by the time the rut really kicks off, so they don't interfere too much with whitetail rifle hunting out here.
 
Got this chonker on the cam last week (don't mind the date or time on the cam). Haven't put out any feed yet though. This is the first fall bear we've seen in the three years we've been here. It's usually in the spring when they're hunting fawns.


Hope to not see him again. I've got a quiet deal with the bears going on- I don't see you, I don't shoot you. So far so good.

vid fail?

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1381172475623039


Does that work? Works for me on fullscreen, but I don't know much about posting videos. My plan is to start putting out feed a bit later this season, of course it's more for the trail cam vids than anything.
 
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CoonT said:
Got this chonker on the cam last week (don't mind the date or time on the cam). Haven't put out any feed yet though. This is the first fall bear we've seen in the three years we've been here. It's usually in the spring when they're hunting fawns.


Hope to not see him again. I've got a quiet deal with the bears going on- I don't see you, I don't shoot you. So far so good.

vid fail?

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1381172475623039


Does that work?
Click to expand...

Not seeing anything
 
Bears won’t leave that spot alone until the food is all gone. We’ve had them still come in late November-30. As mentioned, the nicest alfalfa hay you can find might work to keep deer around until he goes to sleep.
 
Deer have pretty sensitive guts though, don't they? Too much corn or hay can frig up their digestion, put them at risk of starving with a full stomach.
 
Grizzly Adams said:
Bears will be bears, put out food and they're going to come. :redface: Out here baiting is mostly a spring activity for bears, baiting deer is illegal, so we don't have that problem.

Grizz
Click to expand...

Ive heard plenty of people in NB claim that the bears dont bother their carrots but they will eat all the apples & deer feed (rack stacker, beef finisher, dairy mash ect) that they put out. I believe it to be true that baiting with carrots does not attract the bears as apples or other baits do, in NB there are so many bait piles in deer season that the bears can afford to be picky and eat apples, beef finisher and deer gut piles every day, there are seriously mounds of applesauce bear sh*t all over the place even miles from the nearest appletree way back in the woods because the baiters are lugging so many apples in the woods for deer bait literally Tons of apples, I've havent seen any carrot bear sh*t yet in the woods despite some people also using carrots for bait in deer season.
 
starvin said:
Bears won’t leave that spot alone until the food is all gone. We’ve had them still come in late November-30. As mentioned, the nicest alfalfa hay you can find might work to keep deer around until he goes to sleep.
Click to expand...

This is unfortunately the truth, I’ve had it happen before over apples. The bear just kept coming back, I scared him off by standing up also he could see me, yelled at him multiple times. He’d run off and circle back around, no baiting bears in bc though… I finally gave up after a couple attempts in that spot, I didn’t bait it for a week and he came back the day I put another pail of grounders out lol. I just went to a different spot, not only was he eating all my apples but all the deer vacated the area fast.

CoonT said:
Deer have pretty sensitive guts though, don't they? Too much corn or hay can frig up their digestion, put them at risk of starving with a full stomach.
Click to expand...

Don’t know about corn but the deer around me literally live in the local farmer’s hay and alfalfa fields, so I don’t think it does much to their stomachs.

remington jim said:
Fire a Warning shot into his shoulders ! Save the Deer Fawns ! :p:stirthepot2: RJ
Click to expand...

This is the correct answer haha!
 
OP, that's a healthy but skinny bear for this late in the season.

That usually indicates a lack of food sources for them during the summer months.

The bears around my area aren't as fat as they should be going into winter either. Not a good thing IMHO.

We had snow above 400 meters on Monday morning and again Tuesday morning.

A lot of bears and especially yearling cubs aren't going to make it through the winter.
 
Ok, so i bought a tag. Might as well be legal if the opportunity presents itself. hated to pay the money with only a few days left in the season...next year i'll be getting the bear tag at the first of the season for sure. We have an extremely healthy bear population in my area (a mom and four cubs walked in on us camping a cpl of months ago)
 
I found that shooting a bear ruined my deer situation. I also found that not shooting the bear and having him return to my bait all the time ruined my deer situation. So to recap. I hate bears because they ruin my deer situation.

I do try different baits. Peas, wheat and beets seems to attract only deer.
 
Although I’m not in NB so the bears may be slightly different, here I never have had an issues with bears eating the carrots I put out for deer, the deer favour apples as do bears, so once all the apples are gone from the trees on my property the deer then turn to carrots here we put out, and the bears don’t bother the carrots.
I’ve gotten a random pic of the bears passing through smelling the carrot pile, but they never stay and eat them here, whilst the deer absolutely love/destroy/stay at the carrot pile all night/ sometimes in the day after the apples are gone from the trees.

Good luck!
 
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