In November 2004, Maine will likely be in the eye of a national animal rights storm, its voters buffeted by outrageous claims and slick emotional appeals.

When Michigan considered a ban on bear baiting, similar to what Maine voters may face next year, a heart-rending advertisement depicting a little girl who bore the scars of being mauled by a bear was credited with its defeat.

In other states, images of bears cruelly wounded and left to die by incompetent hunters helped animal advocates win their fight.

Few Mainers know the facts about what’s been happening in their forests since the four-week bait-hunting season began in late August.

But with the proposed 2004 referendum to ban several bear-hunting techniques looming over this year’s hunting season, the traditional practice of luring bears with stale pastries, then shooting them at close range while they feed, is being discussed over dinner tables from Caribou to Kittery.

“Years ago, no one even knew what we did, or cared – maybe that was better,” said Wayne Bosowicz, a bear guide from Dover-Foxcroft who is generally viewed as the sport’s chieftain.

Over the next 15 months, Maine voters will have to seek out the facts about bear hunting, all the while being bombarded by passionate opinions.

“By next year, people are going to know more about bears than they do about any other critter,” pledged George Smith, executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine.

Already the Humane Society of the United States has signed on to help a coalition of local groups called Citizens for Fair Bear Hunting fight for a ban on bear baiting, hunting bears with hounds and bear trapping. These types of hunting are cruel, unethical and unnecessary, they say.

And afraid of what they call “the slippery slope,” such groups as the National Rifle Association, the U.S. Sportsman’s Alliance and Safari Club International have pledged support for a sportsmen’s coalition called Maine’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Council, which was created to oppose the ban. An attack on one hunt is an attack on all hunting, and will lead to further regulation, they say.

Both sides estimate that they will be required to spend millions. The rhetoric is ramping up, but there’s little confidence beneath the bravado. As one state legislator said: This is going to be a nasty fight.

Everywhere, bears

In any coastal souvenir shop, plush stuffed black bears mingle with moose and loons, symbols of Maine’s wild north woods. In Orono, Bananas the Black Bear dances for hockey fans at the University of Maine.

But the real black bears are farther afield, in places like Patten, Allagash and Grand Lake Stream. Maine has about 23,000 bears, the largest population in the lower 48 states.

Every winter, Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife biologists follow radio-collared females to their dens and tag newborn cubs to get population data. The state’s 28-year bear study is legendary in the field.

Until recently, study data indicated that bears were rapidly approaching the 36,000 or so animals that Maine’s forests can sustain.

Then, in 1999, the growth stalled. As the Maine woods became a destination for wealthy, safari-style hunters from out-of-state, the bear harvest tripled between 1982 and 2002, peaking at nearly 4,000 kills per season.

But hunting is the only significant source of mortality for Maine’s bears once they reach adulthood. And in recent years, between 60 and 80 percent of the bears killed during the hunting season were taken over bait.

In good years, only about a tenth of all bears are killed by hunters after the baiting season ends in late September. These numbers are the best evidence that several thousand fewer bears would be killed each year without baiting, said state bear biologist Randy Cross.

Cross was an early opponent of the proposed ban. “The end of the bait hunt is the end of bear management in Maine,” he said when the referendum drive was announced.

Now Gov. John Baldacci has given DIF&W staff permission to formally advocate against the ban, even allowing them to appear in advertisements, though not in uniform.

“The department will be opposed to this referendum and will speak against it based on our sciences and our policies,” said Deputy Commissioner Paul Jacques, a former legislator and onetime SAM lobbyist who described himself as “a conduit to hunting groups” on this issue.

Fair Chase

DIF&W plans to argue that hunting is necessary to keep the bear population in balance, and that hunting without bait is just too difficult.

“Bears are really smart animals,” Bosowicz said. “This isn’t just a big fat animal that wanders into the woods and lets somebody shoot it while it eats a box of doughnuts.”

But to Robert Fisk, a former state legislator from Falmouth who founded both Maine Friends of Animals and Citizens for Fair Bear Hunting, that’s exactly what’s been happening in the Maine woods over the past three weeks.

“These animals are not pursued in the time-honored Maine tradition of hunting. They’re slaughtered at the feeding trough,” Fisk said.

“The hunters, if you can call them that, are led [by guides] to the tree stands, and they shoot the animal from close range while it’s eating. It makes a mockery of any sense of fair play or hunting ethics,” he said.

According to a survey of 600 Maine people conducted at the beginning of 2003, at least 70 percent of voters would support the ban, Fisk said.

Even among hunters, bear baiting has been controversial. In a now famous incident that led to the creation of teddy bears, Teddy Roosevelt once refused to shoot a bear that had been chased and injured by dogs because it wasn’t a “fair” hunt.

Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura – not a man known for his soft heart – has called the sport “assassination.”

And past surveys of Maine hunters have indicated that a substantial minority of them think bear baiting is unethical.

Richard Smith, a Brunswick resident who has hunted and fished the Maine woods for 60 years hates baiting as much as he loves hunting.

Years ago, while camping with his children, Smith came upon a bait pile with mounds of animal innards and a cow’s head. The family watched a mother bear and two cubs feeding on the meat, then, a few days later, saw the bear and both her cubs dead in the back of a pickup. That’s not fair hunting, said Smith.

“It’s a devilish law,” he said.

Democratic state Rep. Matt Dunlap, an Old Town hunter, fisherman and chairman of the Legislature’s Fish and Wildlife Committee, has also doubted the validity of bait hunting.

But last fall, he tried bear hunting for the first time and found it a lot more difficult than he had expected. He and other hunters say bear hunting means sitting in a tree stand for hours upon end, drenched with pungent bear lure, stifling sneezes and the urge to swat the season’s last mosquitoes … and maybe never shooting a bear.

Dunlap said he waited an entire season before he even saw his bear, and then didn’t shoot because she had cubs. Hunting bears without bait is “fantasy,” he said.

“It’s more work than anything I’ve ever done hunting,” Dunlap said.

Bait allows hunters to “shop for” a mature bear and then kill it with a clean shot, Dunlap said. Fisk, citing the inexperience of most bear hunters, disagreed.

“Baiting is meant to lead these animals to the slaughter, but ironically, 50 percent of the time, that doesn’t happen,” he said.

DIF&W wildlife director Mark Stadler defended the bear hunt, saying that lures and baits – from the worm on the end of a fish hook to an apple tree which draws deer – have been used to level the playing field for human hunters “since the beginning of time.”

“Nothing in life is done without bait or lure. Zippo,” Bosowicz agreed

And despite some bear guiding operations that promise “guaranteed kills” in their advertisements, bait is no assurance of success, hunters say.

“People make the [flawed] assumption that if you put food out, everything is going to come running to it,” Dunlap said.

People Detectors

In reality, it can take weeks of hard work before bears visit bait stations, which is why the state has a three-week pre-baiting season before the bear hunt begins, hunters say.

Starting at ungodly hours of the morning, Bosowicz and his fellow guides load up their pickup trucks with hundreds of pounds of bear delicacies like caramel, chocolate, rancid meat, molasses and yes, stale doughnuts. Every day for two months, they visit 100 or more stations, hoping that bears will be lured out of their normal routine to feed.

“It might be one hour, or five days or not at all,” Bosowicz said.

Bears are terrified of anything associated with humans, a learned behavior that helps keep them safe. Breaking through their fear to approach that human food is a struggle for most bears, Cross said.

Many bait stations reek of anise, a licorice-like smell that guides say draws the bears and helps to mask the human scent. Bears use their nose as a long-distance people-detector, Cross said.

“What a deer hears and a wolf sees, a bear smells. You can count on it,” Bosowicz said.

There is no agreement on exactly how the animals are affected by the piles of food lying in the woods each fall, however.

During the late summer, bears are eating machines, visiting known food sites to prepare for six months of hibernation that sometimes begins as early as October.

Those who oppose baiting say that bears get used to human food, then seek it out, becoming nuisances in the ever-growing suburbs popping up on the fringes of bear habitat.

“Once they get habituated to an easy meal, they’re going to go looking for human food sources,” Fisk said. “You take this beautiful animal and make it into a dump rat.”

Those who favor baiting argue that the extra food helps to keep bear in the woods during years when natural food sources are scarce. Bears are the ultimate opportunists and they won’t seek out garbage cans miles away when beechnuts or bait piles are available nearby, Cross said.

The biologist points to tagged bears in the state’s study areas, where they have frequently fed on bait, yet rarely been identified as nuisance animals.

“Those bears keep their noses clean,” he said.

But without the high bear kills that come with baiting, bears’ fear could be eroded, Cross said.

For 400 years, Maine’s black bears have lived amid a “landscape of fear,” knowing that humans are dangerous, and that human scent equals guns.

And with 3,000 fewer bears being killed every fall, Maine’s bear population could spike to capacity within five or 10 years. At peak numbers, natural population controls like starvation can kick in, and large male bears start killing off smaller males that move into their territories.

As these hungry, less fearful bears leave the crowded forests seeking new sources of food, they’ll have nowhere to go but human territory, Cross said.

Opponents of the referendum cite bears’ aggression – they do attack people, Smith said.

“If it gets its dander up, you’re a goner,” Dunlap agreed.

Statistics show that bear attacks are astronomically rare, however. According to Lynn Rogers, a bear biologist based in Minnesota, about three dozen people have been killed by bears in North America this century. By his calculations, that makes one in 900,000 bears a killer, and your chances of being mauled less than that of death by lightening, bees or a pet dog.

DIF&W argues that baiting is a necessary tool for bear management, to maintain a balance between safety concern, nuisance complaints and hunting opportunity.

“Everything in life needs management,” Bosowicz said.

Maine had a bear bounty until 1957 – in part because of nuisance problems.

“[If the referendum passes] we’ll be back to the years when bears were varmints and we had to hire people to kill them,” Smith said.

And in other states, nuisance problems have led wildlife managers to consider reinstating long-banned bear hunts.

“If you think anything of the animal, why would you curb our wildlife people?” Bosowicz asked. “I’d like to see the animal win for once. Not me, not the politicians, not the dollar bill.”

Fisk calls the bear control argument a myth. Black bears were an integral part of Maine long before suburbs and highways sprung up near their forest, and it’s arrogant to say that nature cannot manage itself, he said.

“We’ve got to learn to live with these animals,” he said.

Bear Market

Beyond biological or even safety concerns, however, lies the root of all politics – money.

This is the time of year when cars with Pennsylvania and Massachusetts license plates clog northern Maine roads. Thousands of people travel hundreds of miles for a Maine bear hunt, and DIF&W estimates that they drop more than $12 million along the way.

A typical weeklong bear hunt can net a guide between $800 and $2,000. And most bear hunters are financially comfortable enough to spend money on butchering and taxidermy, as well as hotels, restaurants and merchandise at L.L. Bean’s showroom before heading home.

For guide services and sporting camps that cater to the bear season, baiting is key to keeping the hunt popular. If baiting is banned in Maine, they fear that potential customers will just drive a few more hours to Quebec, which has a huge bear-hunting industry.

“These people want the bait hunt, and they can do it in other places,” Cross said.

Several dozen guides rely almost exclusively on bear to make their living, and they would go out of business without baiting, said Skip Trask, spokesman for the Maine Guides Association.

“This has been my life,” Bosowicz said of his three decades in the business.

But other states, including Washington, Oregon and Colorado, have banned baiting while maintaining a profitable bear hunt, Fisk said.

“Of the 27 states that allow bear hunting, 18 do not resort to baiting,” Fisk said. “This is a proud hunting state with hunters who understand what ethical hunting means. Baiting is bad public policy, and it’s a bad image for the state.”

Slippery Slope

But Fisk himself isn’t a hunter, and neither are the activists from the Humane Society of the United States who are working on this campaign – as almost any hunter will point out when asked about the bear referendum.

“This is about our hunting privilege,” George Smith said. “These people are relentless. They find the most vulnerable type of hunting and that’s what they pick on first.”

SAM has long feared a formidable opponent like the Humane Society coming to Maine. The society has never lost a referendum on bear baiting, though efforts led by other groups in Idaho and Michigan have been defeated. In some states, such as Colorado and Massachusetts, the successful baiting referendum came hand-in-hand with attempts to ban trapping.

“Sportsmen understand that our tradition is under attack,” Smith said. “We’ll definitely be united.”

Fisk sighed when he heard the slippery slope argument, and called it “an alarmist strategy” used to combat his side’s scientific and ethical arguments. Maine Friends of Animals just wants to ban these three practices which its members believe to be inhumane, he said.

“This is an argument we hear no matter what wildlife bill we’re engaged with. We aren’t radical animal rights extremists,” Fisk said. “This is not an act to end hunting.”

To Fisk, the state’s taking a stand against the referendum is just more evidence of an old boys’ link between DIF&W and the hunting community. Maine Friends of Animals has twice tried and failed to ban bear baiting in Augusta.

Now, Fisk is taking the issue to the ballot box. If, as expected, the group succeeds in collecting 50,519 signatures of certified voters this fall and winter, Mainers will make their own decisions on bear baiting in November of 2004.

“You have a few legislators and a special interest group like SAM deciding what Maine will do,” Fisk said of his group’s failures in Augusta. “This is a classic example of why Maine has a ballot initiative.”