I am going to the bear grocery store next week to get bait to start baiting in June I will be getting bait for 3 of us is there anything you have had better luck with over something else last time I did this I used pop tarts and pie filling just curious on your thoughts

Trail mix.

Heavy on the nuts/ grains, lighter on the sugars.

BnB: X2 you are correct!

Popcorn, I buy 50 pound bags of popcorn seeds. Makes a lot of bait, you can flavor it if you want but bears like it plain too.

When I was a kid we baited with dead cows, have to tie them to a tree. I could get free dead dairy cow a couple times a week. Bears would be on them all the time. I remember pulling up to drop off another one and hear them popping their teeth inside the brush, kinda spooky at night. We then ran hounds off the baits, a full bear trees a lot faster than a hungry bear.

wws

popcorn licorice donut frosting peanut butter beaver pork chicken chocolate peanuts... all work well but don't mix meat with sweet is my advice

No meat allowed in Wisconsin I can get barrels and peanut butter and such

Beacon grease is good to bring them in but I don't think the DNR Likes it.

[video:youtube]https://youtu.be/PDAWfGDg9Kw?si=as7AVgNypyn4ibTA[/video]

A variety is good. Trail mix is king, easy on the sugar.

I used to sell a lot of beaver carcasses for bear bait. One of my better customers came up with a custom mix that worked better for their contracts with the timber companies. I never knew what the recipe was but i could maybe find out as I know one of the guys that worked for them.

Thanks for video

Used baking grease.

Disagree Bruce. There is basically no food value to grease. It's a good traing scent, thats all.a good "scent".

Would you walk a mile after the smell of a cheeseburger and only find the smell , and no reward will do it again
after doing it.?


All this smell stuff pees me off.
There better be foods" , yanno, something they can eat" when they get there.
All these liquid scents are nothing more then an initial attractant.

And EVERY SINGLE bear in the lower 48 that has a few years on it knows it.
I was using anise, gold rush, (long before it became a commercial product)

;), wouldn't doubt I was the very first to use it over 30 years ago. ( I found it by accident).
All these liquid scents do is initially start the bait and every older bear has " smelled there, done that".


Anything meat based better be fresh. Bears have gotta be dang near starving to eat meat once the flies find it.

I'd try the small oil sunflower seeds for the grain product. There is a reason people's birdfeeders get hammered.

I used to use grease both as something to mix in the bait and also poured on the ground for the bears to walk around in. They created scent trails in their travels. As for how palatable fryer grease is, I placed a five gallon pail with what amounted to Crisco at a site. The bears licked that pail clean.

Baiting bear isn't hard, it's all about hoarding edibles in volume.

We used to buy the cheapest dog feed we could find. You could still get used fryer grease from fast food places, and pour it on the dog feed. Dog feed now is lots better and pricier. Fryer grease hard to get. They sure liked it.

Rather than sit and watch the bait we would look for a big track. Track it away from the bait a ways and put dogs on it.

So what was the gold rush . And were do you get it

Arthur,the local bear trapper uses a couple beaver carcasses in the cage and a liquid scent heavy on vanilla ,squirted out of a dish soap bottle to get them to go to the open end of the cage and in.
Never misses a bear.Gets them all.

Last year the village flooded and the store had to throw everything out so we had quite a cornucopia of bait. Those fire Cheetos are popular here and we had quite a bit from the flooded store, wasn't sure if they would eat it or not but they polished it off, not a single fire Cheeto left! Matter of fact they ate everything we packed in the barrels regardless of what it was. Maybe some bears are picky but the ones in my neck of the woods sure aren't.