Now to hit it hard for the next two weeks or so and hopefully he slips up on night while I am in stand

Nice Bear

Nice Bear

Tree stand or ground blind? Bow or firearm?

Do you market all your bearhides Sask or just hunt for meat?
I commercial hide hunted bear for quite a few years in the 80's and 90's.

Tree stand and will be using my 338. Shot will be about 25 yards

I don’t market any of them. Some people are obsessed with big deer I’m obsessed with hunting big bears. Where I am hunting is in the provincial forest. I don’t have a registered line so I’m limited to the one tag a year. A couple years ago SK got a bear trapping season on the forest edge. I support it but it’s not something I would ever do

Heavy cover? I don't hunt bear for myself anymore but I bait for friends. I've been setting my stands up further off the baits within reasonable shooting distance for the folks I'm helping. Probably see more bear if they're a hundred yards away rather than twenty-five.

I took a spin on my wheeler yesterday looking to see if I could cut a bear track but I didn't see any. I checked a camera and was pretty confident a bear had stripped the beaver carcasses before I ever looked at the card. A beauty.

From a few years back, but never connected.

If he walked in I would hammer him!! Yes setup in heavy cover. I’m a fan of setting in heavy cover. I feel it helps with daylight movement but if I can be in heavy cover and find a shooting lane to get back a bit that’s an ideal situation. My other bait is a ground blind and I’m back about 40-50 yards. That bait is in heavy spruce

The big ones bring the good money on the market.
If you get one a year it wont be long you will have a pile of hides unless you toss em.

This has been one of the best producing sites I have. Bait on one side of a beaver flowage and the stand on the other. Bear know how you're entering and exiting an area. That water buffer gives them a great sense of security.

What a mess to get in and out of and very hard to find and retrieve bear from. You can see my trail through the knee deep water and muck.

Posco looks like an awesome bait site! Sure the big bears that show up there make it worth the effort

That’s kind of cool, something I don’t deal with on the plains. I don’t think I ever want to run into one! Have to keep us updated.

Posco,throw down some corduroy in that muskeg and run your bike in there.

Up here I always set them up to give the bear the heaviest cover coming in. The stand is set first by the prevailing wind and second by the in and out direction. My bow/pistol shooters are set up in the heaviest cover of all. Rifle shooters very rarely out on an open edge. I do better cutting a shooting window in past the edge a bit.
Don’t forget, highway baits can be the absolute best thing going when set up right.

Osky

Sask that bear seems to have a really big noggin, beauty.
Poscoe that’s a dandy sa well.

Osky tell some more on this highway bait. Never heard that before

Just a friendly tip, one of the guides I work with in Portage got a ticket for bear baiting out of the baiting season. I run cameras in the spring & summer but no bait. "Bait may be placed 30 days prior to the bear hunting with bait season and no later than October 31." I stopped hanging beaver carcasses for fisher & marten because the rules are to hard to follow.

Bears see roads all the time, they are what they are to a bear. If you can find the right conditions and geographic components you can use the highway or roadway as a backstop. Bait straight in off the road, one trail and not very far in at all. The stand is just right or left of the in trail.
In my country I always look for a north south road and set th bait off the west side. Our prevailing wind is from the west so the hunter is face into it. As long as the bears have plenty of heavy cover to approach unseen from the traffic, cars means nothing. The best setups the hunter can turn and nearly spit back onto the road. If set up right you take out 190 degrees of bear approach left right and behind because the bears will avoid coming from the road hence plenty cover needed In my case to the west. If there are open fields or flat country on the opposite side of the road it’s super. I tell hunters if they need to move or fidget do it when a car goes by.
Bucksnbears used a lot of these set ups too, we both have had terrific success with it.

Osky

Don’t bait bears out of season for pictures, use castor smells and bear urine or anal gland smells.

Osky