Too warm; Too wet.  Jason and I hunted Thursday, Friday and Saturday without any luck whatsoever.  Our bait stations were being hit, but no bears decided to come out during daylight hours.  We did however get visited by a few other creatures during our time in the stand.  On Thursday night a wolverine wandered under our tree (which was a bit unnerving), and into the bait station.  I had never seen a wolverine before so it was pretty cool; they sure do look mean.  Their marks/striping give them a menacing look.  Just before dark we heard what we hoped was a bear…only to be disappointed by 3 well-fed raccoons.   After watching them crawl all over the logs at our bait station, we scared them away and headed back to Conrads to clean up. 

Despite being shut out by the bear on Thursday, we decided to celebrate bear hunting season by splurging on frozen pizza and Premium Grainbelt at Doc’s Bar in Sturgeon Lake.  Unfortunately we were 1 day too early to be entertained by Karaoke Ken, but I did kick Jason’s butt in Big buck Hunter.

Friday Jason and I helped my Dad (along with Dave Tatge) finish up the exterior siding on the bunkhouse.  The bunkhouse is really looking better and better! 

Friday night was Jason’s turn to hunt, will I manned the camera.  I was “sure” a HUGE bear would walk in front of Jason with a bulls eye painted on it’s chest (I will devote a future blog entry to Jason’s trophy wall vs. mine), but (un)fortunately the only visitors of the night were the same 3 raccoons at dusk.

It rained all day on Saturday and we decided that it would be wise for us to split up and double our odds of getting a bear that night.  It rained the majority of the time in the stand, which made it impossible to hear anything except for the billions of raindrops bouncing off of everything in the woods.  The only sign of life I saw that night was a lonely skunk and a few woodpeckers.  Jason was visited by the wolverine and raccoons.

Overall, the hunting was a bust, but I’m not complaining.  Getting out in the woods, and up in the tree stand is a welcome change from the hustle and bustle of “real” life.  Ah, but it’s nice to be home again.

This past Sunday (Sept. 7th) Jason and I made the trip to Moose Lake to bait one last time before we begin to hunt.  We baited our Moose Lake bait station first.  Once we arrived at the bait site, we were both surprised and happy to see that all of our bait (doughnuts and cereal) had been cleaned out of the bait pit.  Interestingly, the bottom 2-3 inches of the pit was filled with a sandy sludge which could have been partially composed of our bait.  Along with the empty bait pit, we also found a number of trails coming and going into the site.  From the condition of the trails it appears that a bear (or bears) have been visiting the site regularly.  We also found a good size pile of bear feces on one of the trails. 

Jason setup a bow stand in a nearby pine tree with enough room for us to place another stand next to it for the cameraman to sit in.  At this point we hadn’t decided which of our two bait sites we’d be hunting at, but did decided that we were both going to sit at the same bait station when we do begin to hunt.  We decided this because we’ve both shot bear already, and we’d rather shoot 1 bear and get it on video, as opposed to having better odds of shooting 2 bears and missing out on video taping either of the hunts. 

The Barnum bait station had also been hit, but only about half of the bait had been eaten.  We did find one hind bear print in the mud surrounding the bait pit, but it looked like a smaller bear.  I put up a bow stand in a nearby pine tree and we baited the station. 

Our plan for hunting is to take Thursday and Friday (Sept. 11 and 12) off from work and hunt the extended 4-day weekend.  The ‘plan’ if you can call it that is to fill both of our tags in these 4 days and be done with hunting.  As much fun as it is to sit in the woods and hunt, bear hunting is an exhausting endevour; not to mention time-consuming.  Let’s hope my next post will include pictures of two bears.

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.

On Friday, Jason and I took the day off of work to drive up to Moose Lake and setup our bait stations.  With both of us each having a kid now finding the time to trounce around the woods is hard to do.  But with the ‘free pass’ from the wives we got on the road around 6am for a long day ahead of us.

Once we got up to Conrads we started loading up the trailer to bait our first station.  We brought along the following bait:

• Four 5-gallon buckets of doughnuts
• 2 gunny sacks (50 lbs each) of Cinnamon Toast Crunch
• 40 lbs bucket White doughnut glaze
• 30 lbs container Molasses

After a bit of trouble finding our 4-wheeler trail from 2 years ago, we finally loaded up as much of the bait we could carry and started off into the thickest part of the woods (prime bear area).  To lessen the load of carrying two 5-gallon buckets each (along with other supplies) I picked up a “water noodle-thingy” (5 foot long, foam flotation tube that has a hollow core.  We cut the tube in half, inserted a rope through the core and tied each end of the rope to the buckets.  This way we could use our backs to help with the weight without having the rope dig into our necks.

Once we reached our bait station, I volunteered to go back to the 4-wheeler to get the remaing bait while Jason prepped the site (dug/cleaned the hole for the bait, cleared any brush/branches that may impede our arrow, locate logs to lay on the bait, and clear an area for our ‘honey burn’.  Once I got back to the 4-wheeler and grabbed the remaining bait (both gunny sacks of cereal and the bucket of doughnut glaze) it was apparent my trek to the bait station would be very painful.  Thank goodness, about half way through my trip, Jason decided to find me to help lighten the load; I don’t think I would have made it with out his help.

Once we emptied all our bait into the bait hole, covered it with the 6 foot long logs, covered the pile (and coated a few trees around the station) with molasses, we started our “honey burn”.  A honey burn is a trick we picked up from a local in Moose Lake a couple of years ago.  Basically, you find an old tin coffee can in which you can place a container of Sterno in.  Above the sterno you hang a tin cup (vegetable can) with a long bolt through the diameter (so as to balance on the lip of the coffee can).  In the vegetable can you pour about a cup (or so) of honey.  The smell of boiling honey is a perfect attractant to any bears down wind.

After finally getting back to the 4-wheeler we drove back to the truck and headed back to Conrads to pick up more bait for our next 2 stations.  While loading up bait for our next trip, Jason started working on the 4-wheeler because it wasn’t starting.  To make a long story short, after 2 hours of taking apart the whole machine we finally were back on the road, headed for Barnum.

The Barnum public land we hunt (both bear and deer) is not nearly as thick, rough terrain as the public land in Moose Lake, so we were able to find the 1st bait station and bait without any issues.  But, because of the 2 hour setback from hacking the 4-wheeler to pieces (literally) we ran out of daylight and had to settle for only 2 bait stations this year.  With the amount of work that goes into baiting each station, and the limited amount of time we have in our schedules, I am glad we only have 2 stations to keep filled this year.

So, what does it take to attract bears to your bait station? What food(s) to use? What attractant(s) to use?

In my limited experience, attracting bears to your bait site is important, but once you’ve got bears visiting your bait site, it’s important to have an appetizing menu as to keep the bears coming back.

I used all of the following to attract bears to my bait site:

• Honey
• Jello (powder)
• Maple Syrup
• Molasses
• Commerical Jellies
• Blueberry spray

I’ve used the following baits to keep the bears at the site:

• Granola
• Dog Food
• Marshmallow Cream
• Breakfast Cereals (Captain Crunch/Fruit Loops)
• Licorice
• Gummy Worms/Bears
• Doughnuts
• Chocolate Syrup

Which work the best?

Attractant: Honey (the smell of burning honey has seemed to work beautifully in my experience)
Bait: Breakfast Cereal (sugar, sugar, sugar)