To the editor:
Thank you, Clare Kierstead of Presque Isle, for speaking up a couple of weeks ago about the Fair Bear Hunting referendum to be on the June ballot. Please note that it is called Fair Bear Hunting (not No Bear Hunting). I am so tired of the devious stories of the various “Special Interest Groups” and the politics and lobbying being done by them with outright lies concerning the Fair Bear Hunting groups.
We are all very aware that it is necessary to control the bear population just as we do the deer and the moose population. We do not allow baiting, hounds or traps to be used with the deer and moose herds. We are only asking the same law for the bear.
To bait a bear for weeks and then stand and slowly take aim is not a hunting sport. If you are hiring out as a guide, you can certainly do better than that and keep it a hunting sport and a management policy of the bear population.
Maine is the only state in American to still allow the trap, bait and hound hunting procedures. Man, are we some brave and skilled Maine hunters if we can only shoot an animal who is in a leg trap and so busy chewing its own leg off that it will give you plenty of time to aim well. You don’t even have to work up a sweat. This could really be called armchair hunting — the trap is the remote.
Talk about nuisance bears. When people insist on leaving their stinky garbage out in open garage cans, all wild and domestic animals are going to seek it out including the skunk, feral and domestic cats. Hold the people to the Maine litter laws and you will cut down on nuisance bears, skunks, cats, dogs, coyotes, you name it. This is not a complicated issue.
The Fair Bear Hunting group simply wants a Fair Bear Hunting law.
Norma Milton
Caribou
