Throw out some favorites homemade Baits

One of mine that I don't have this year is beef Suet

Looking for other bulky ideas ...

Never have had success with dog food

You can spice up any bait with a tart powdered drink mix or molasses. I use them quite often. TS sells gallon jugs of deer molasses. I don't add much but it keeps them at the barrel longer licking their paws.

popcorn, marshmellows, cookies, go to your local bakery ask for the stuff they plan on throwing away and go to the local feed store you can buy oats and corn in 50 lb bags

Tainted beaver carcass for a long distance call and a shot of vanilla extract and fish oil gets them into the cage.

Any thing the kids love to eat the bears will enjoy.

I'd use beaver...but we can only use 1/3 of a carcass. And get this...

No bones.

Beaver leftovers. Liquid smoke on a sent rag in the wind on a tree limb. Just not in Oregon, baiting here would be wrong.

No bones? And 1/3 carcasses?



Owl

I always liked hog feed from the co op mixed with fryer oil can also add some molasses to it for sweetness. Makes a good pourage.

The outfitter I have hunted with in Manitoba uses oats a KFC fryer grease. Go to your local restaurant or burger bar to get their fryer grease and stir it with you oats and let them soak.

I shudder when I think of some of the horrid CRAP that I have lugged down into some cedar swamp to entice a bear. At one time I tried near everything I had ever heard was the "best" bear bait. Had I been able, I even planned to buy an old sway-back nag and, after leading the hapless horse back into a beary spot, shooting it. I've hauled hundreds of lbs of meat scraps and suet in to them, produce, popcorn, dogfood, oats, corn, molassas by the gallons, anise extract by the quart, various fish parts.....even carried a dead calf holstein in on my shoulders once. I have never hauled a dead cow (adult anyways), but have helped others do it. Now, with 46+ years of experience under my belt, my favorite baits are pastries and granola. It is SO much more fun to sit downwind of a granola pile than a maggoty mound of beef suet and rotten fish. If I toss anything that will get real ripe, it is only when I start the baits up, to, as Boco says, send out a long distance call. If the All Purpose Boy and I use anything other than that, it will be the various pie fillings, candies, and sweet donut glaze type stuff that we can buy from the bear bait emporium we buy from. Those bear bait suppliers didn't exist when I first started baiting in the mid 70's. I got most all my bait from dumpster diving, my local butcher, or various donut/bread shops, or the farmers co-ops where we got grains and molassas in bulk. It is so much easier to make one trip to the bear bait guy a month befor season and ....boom....your done scrounging and only transfering it to 5 gallon pails. It is almost fun nowadays.

You used to be able to get molasses at elevators, they had it in bulk tanks and they would fill buckets for you. Then pour it over shell corn, or oats. It would be good to have a little beef fat mixed in if you could find it.

I have used 105 things like you J Morse,
Never carcasses only because we can't here; otherwise I would have.

My best was 6 buckets , six piles in a log crib. Beef Fat in two buckets bucket of gummed, 2 buckets of raw cookie dough , bucket of black oil seeds all put in the crib separate piles. Logs on top Heavy.
Fryer grease poured in front of the crib.
Bacon grease painted on trees in a big "V" 75 yds or so away from the bait.

Tried burns 50 different ways. Tomorrow I'll buy my license, open One Bait. Buy some oats, cracked corn, 5 gallons of molasses, 24 ears of sweet corn, 2 big PButter tubs, Anise paste, Bacon Grease. Beaver Castor? Sac. Oil.

I just don't have the cash I used to spend baiting.

The best bait I ever got my hands on was granola straight from Nature Valley. A couple local guys used to carry it but I haven't been able to get it in quite a while. I've wondered if the antis got to NV and put the kibosh to it. Bear never left it once they found it.

Nick Wysinski’s saw dust bait from the local butcher. Age it couple days mix in real good four ounces of honey per gallon.
Smear on trees near the bait bbl see which they go to.

I went to the chow hall in the morning on base and scrounged up the stuff folks scraped off their plates, like bacon, French toast with syrup, pancakes, etc. I did it for a month and that bear sure was a tasty bear. 1985

Excellent picture Paul. What base was this?

Pick-a - Nick Baskets . saw it on TV

They seem to love my tactacams in the bear boxes.....

Corn mash is another very effective, and very cheap bait. Fill a 5 gal bucket with shelled corn, add a 5# bag of sugar and fill it with water. Put a lid on it and wait a couple of days. Bears LOVE alcohol.

Fresh/frozen beef tallow.