The 2nd bear baiting session of the season was an individual effort of mine because Jason had family plans over the weekend of the 23rd.  Jason drew the 3rd session, Labor Day weekend because I was in Florida (Brant’s wedding).

2nd weekend

My baiting day went well.  I started off baiting the station in Moose Lake first and brought out three 5-gallon buckets of doughnuts and 1 gunny sack of cereal, as well as a 20 pound container of molasses.  My first trip from the 4-wheeler to the station was accompanied by two buckets of doughnuts and the molasses.  The trail to the station was barely visible, but I’ve made the trek enough to basically know my way around that part of the woods.  I was happy to find that a bear had moved a few of the logs from bait hole.  Not all of the bait had been eaten, but that wasn’t very surprising.  The woods are still plentiful with berries and acorns.  My trip back to the 4 wheeler to collect the remaining bait was uneventful. 

I returned to Conrads to load up with the same amount of bait for my trip to the Barnum bait station.  After finally reaching the bait station in the public land in the Barnum woods, I was again happy to see that a bear had been snooping around our bait.  The logs were pushed aside, but not much much of the bait had been eaten.  In fact, much of the cereal that was coated with the blueberry filling was not even touched.  Nonetheless, I dumped all the bait I brought and coated the nearby trees with remaining the blueberry jelly.

3rd weekend

Jason baited the same amount as I did on Labor Day weekend, and his report was that both stations had been hit fairly hard.  One of the stations had most of the bait pushed out of the hole.  And apparently a few of the trees at the Barnum site had claw marks where I had thrown the blueberry jelly.  So far so good.  One more weekend of baiting before we start to hunt.  Hopefully the natural sources of food start to dry up so that be bears begin to frequent our bait stations more.