How to lure big black bears to your bait sites—and keep them there longer during legal light

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The old tactic of filling a bait barrel until it’s oozing with all kinds of weird and sweet goo is what most hunters adopt in the spring, but sometimes it provides a serious disservice. That’s because it can lead to one greedy bear taking over the site, leaving no room for other potential shooter-sized bears to come in. Just because a bear is big, it doesn’t mean it will risk injury trying to get an easy meal, especially if the competition is a smaller, meaner sow with cubs in tow.

So, if you want to encourage more and bigger bears to stick around your bait site, use the barrel as a secondary means of curiosity that doesn’t provide maximum reward to just one bear. That’s easy to accomplish by not filling the barrel to the brim with sweets. Instead, I like to dump in an expired bag of dogfood, with absolutely no extra scent added, making sure it’s deep enough in the barrel so only bears with the longest forearms can reach in and scoop some out. Remember, you’re baiting with the hopes of attracting quality bears into the area, not creating a refuge for scraggly four-year-olds.