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

#4  BAIT EARLIER

Typically, the biggest boars will visit your bait site at night, long after you’ve left your stand and crawled into bed. By then, they’ve run any smaller bears out of the area, and no longer have to worry about competition for food. Many times, for example, my trail camera has been devoid of activity until around 10 p.m., at which point a black bear of otherworldly proportions struts in and dines on my bait for three hours. Such seemingly untouchable bears are, in fact, the exact opposite. You can get them, and what’s more, you can manipulate their carefree schedule to put the odds in your favour.

When I first started bear baiting years ago, I’d set the bait out in the evening after work. That was fine for putting big bears in front of the trail camera at night, but not a single one would come in during the day. I also had plenty of photo evidence of them running smaller black bears out of the bait site shortly after dark, and eventually those small bears would stop coming at all.

At some point, it dawned on me that if I changed the timing of the food supply, it would also alter the timing of when the bears visited the site. Big bears won’t stand idle when smaller bears take food right from under their noses, so by baiting early in the morning instead of at night, you increase the odds of bigger than average boars wandering into your site earlier to lay claim to what’s on the menu. Baiting in the morning also gives the enticing scent from your site more time to reach the bears you’re looking for—and eventually lead that one big boar to make a fatal mistake.