Attractant scents the key
to successful bear hunting
MAINELY OUTDOORS
by Bill Graves
If all the sightings and signs prove accurate, this year’s black bear season should be extremely productive and memorable. Bait sites could be established beginning July 31 and hunting actually gets under way on Aug. 30. So whether you’re going to use a long gun, handgun, bow, or camera, enticing bruin to visit a particular spot near a ground blind or tree stand needs to get underway now.
Contributed photo
A GUIDE leads a hunter toward a bear stand for an evening hunt. A bucket of bait in one hand and a spray bottle of Bear Scents anise spray will cover human scent and work as an attractant.
While there’s always an ongoing debate regarding the most enticing food products to keep bear returning to a bait site, even more important in my mind is how to attract them to begin with. Just putting out a food source might work, but most outfitters, guides, and expert hunters agree that appealing to a black bear’s sense of smell continues to be the premier method of drawing them to a bait site. Following are a few tried and true tactics which continue to work and a few new products and techniques that are becoming mainstays to fall bear hunting.
One traditional scent producer that’s easy to use, inexpensive, and extremely aromatic over long distances is fish. A mesh onion bag full of discarded lobster shells and bodies, or fish heads, entrails, and carcasses from filleted fish, hung from a tree limb near the bait barrel seldom fail. Any scent producing product needs to be hung from a tree branch high enough so even a big bruin can’t reach it and pull it down, and the height also lets the wind to circulate the pungent smell over a wider area. Select a tree limb thick enough to support the scent bag but thin enough not to support a bear’s weight and hang the bag far enough out on the limb that a bear climbing the tree trunk can’t reach it.
Anise, a strong smelling licorice favored oil is another traditional attractant and cover scent. Just an ounce of anise flavoring mixed into an emulsion and poured into a reclaimed pump window spray bottle allows a sportsman to disperse the aromatic mixture onto leaves, fir boughs and brush around a bait site. Spreading used cooking oil, especially if French fries, fish or chicken have been cooked in it, also works wonders. Most restaurants using deep fryers will have waste oil to give away.
Making a honey burn is another sweet smelling attractor aroma. Use a can of Sterno or small camp stove for heat, pour honey into an old frying pan and cook away. Keep over the heat even as the honey turns dark and gives off copious amounts of smoke that rises and coats the trees, shrubs, and bushes around the bait site. When the honey is only a burnt black disk, flip it out onto the ground and leave it as a scent source too.
All of these scents cling to the grass, ground, and leaves for weeks and every time one bear visits the bait, the scent rubs onto its fur and feet. As the bruin travels, the smells linger in its trail and when another bear crosses that trail and smells the attractive odor, it might just follow it back to your bait area. Now two bear are dosed in attractant and leaving trails for other bear to cross,— and hopefully it’s a pyramid effect.
For the novice bear baiters or sports with just one or two baits and limited time to work them, perhaps mass-produced, commercially available attractant scents are the answer. I stumbled across a Wisconsin company called Bear Scents LLC several years ago, have used their products every autumn since and the results are unbelievable. One late afternoon and evening last year I actually watched five different bear come to a baiting spot in Fort Fairfield. Once there were three bruin there at one time.
Most regional sporting goods stores carry an assortment of Bear Scent products, and I know for sure Ben’s Trading Post in Presque Isle has a good selection on hand. Cabela’s also carries and ships these products, or sportsmen can order by phone or e-mail directly from the company. Available scent products include sprays, gels, powders, and scent balls in over a dozen aromas, and also a caramel extract solution to add to deep fryer oil to increase fragrance and potency. I’ve had great luck with bacon, anise, blueberry and honey scents in the spray and gel formulation.
Hang a bacon or anise bait ball from a tree branch near the bait barrel and the wind carried smell draws bear from afar. The 18-pound ball slowly dissolves and drips in warm weather and rain but will last a couple of months. I’ve had bear dig a hole the size of a 10-gallon bucket in the ground under the ball. Check out www.bearscents.com for more info on these sure fire scents and if you can’t find what you need locally call toll free at 1-888-215-2327 to order.
Regardless of what great food hunters put out to feed black bear, it’s their nose, not their taste buds that bring them to the bait site the first time. The better the aroma, the greater the number of bear that will check it out and perhaps one will be the trophy of a lifetime. It just makes sense to use scents.
