Want some input on baiting

[Tikkamike]

Thanks for the advice carl. Ill keep that all in mind!

[IdahoCTD]

My uncle use to guide in western Wyoming and he used to use old horses too. He would chain them to a tree and wait until they got ripe. He use to put a cow head in the bottom of the barrel when he used barrels so if you ran out of bait they would keep coming back for a few days to try and get the head.

[retiredcpo]

Tikkamike
we have been baiting for several years now.
The first two years we did alot of experimenting. Penut butter here.honey there apple suace over there. Grease fron resturants, Green apples red apples ect.
We tried cooking honey and bear crack jjust about everthign you can think of.
Now I only use dog food and cheap peaches if I can get them.
If you are using a barrel put a half circle at the bottom and put bars accross the top to keep them from climbing in Chain/strpa it to a tree tightly. Dump in a couple of bags of dog food and then some peaches then dog food on top, this will smash the peaches and get the juise all over the dog food. You can also sprinkle jello mix on the dog food.
Poor the grease on the ground around the bait so they have to walk in it. They will track it around leaving a scent trail for others to follow back to your site
Use a trail camera if you have one and post some pics for us. I got some pics of a three legged bear last fall.
good luck let us know how it goes
retiredpo

[sp6x6]

I went on a few trips with a guy that put in almost 15 yrs baiting. We got treats and baked goods from store or Eddies.Unwrap all goodies,piesbrownies, twinkes,etc. Then trash compact. This made a compact about 45 # package. We had a small trailer full. Enough for 6 sites 2-3 weeks, fresh almost each day if hit. Used barrels and set to height to help judge bear. Paw, big sized,hole. Laggged and washered to tree.Some metal also. We had a stink barrel kept going for years,halibut,beaver, rotten anything.Fill a gallon jug and pour on trails in way in to bait,and high on trees for scent to carry.This barrel made some loose it. We later went to liquid smoke,commercial,in a spray bottle, spray everything on way in and high on trunks. This camp took over 70 pope bears over these years.Several Boone and one 21 3/4 archery.

[axe3761]

heres what i do for my stink baits...
i pick up every tulobee and dog fish and fish carcasses i can get my hands on from ice fishing.
i then put a few in plastic pails with about 2 gals water or fill em full of snow when i pail em up.
sealed, they sit untill i get them into the bait site where i dig a small hole so the lid is sticking up out of the ground.
i then poke as many small holes with an ice pic as i can in the lid before i can't stand the stank anymore.
i put on a steel cover made from an old expansion tank from an old boiler that has the dish in the ends.. i cut it in half and cut crosses into the dish part so the rain water keeps it wet and the small ice pic holes let the water in but keeps the flies out. i weld a couple tabs on the tank end with holes cut in em big enough to slide a re-bar shaft cut on an angle then pound em into the ground about 3-4 feet. they can't get them out of the ground no how. lol.
these stink for weeks and you only gotta do it once.

use your fryer grease for pouring all the way around your barrel and down the trails they use so when they come in they get it on their fur and drag it out with them down the diff trails they use so other bears that might not smell your bait will smell the grease on the trail. let the bears do the work for you. they go places you won't and that grease stays with em a long time.

hard to beat beavers for bait but hard to get enough to rely on those to make it to the end of the hunt.
doughnuts work well but just as hard to get as the beavers, they last forever. lol.
if you use meat scraps, make sure you keep it fresh...well as fresh as you can get anywho.
i notice a lot of guys put their baits in light cover...big mistake.
get your bait into the darkest, thickest spruce you can find, hopefully close to water.
they are wary to expose themselves in daylight but feel safe in dark spruce. giving you more shooting light before legal time because they are coming in earlier. hope this novel, lol, helps out some new bear hunters harvest a bear this spring.
one last tip...get or make a good trail camera and use it. you can see whats coming in and when. its gonna save you tons of time by not sitting on a bait that has a sow with cubs at heel. you might as well pull that bait. lol.
you won't be shooting her or cubs and she will chase ANYTHING that come near her newborns. yearling cubs are another story...they will be getting kicked out as soon as she comes into season(breeding) and you can use her to pull in the big boars in early june. hides will be rubbed but you will see the big guys then.