Maine outdoorsmen begin their annual ritual of selecting a likely location and setting up bear baits today. In exactly 30 days, the first day of black bear hunting will take place. During this monthlong endeavor, individual sportsmen will try every trick in the book to entice a bruin to not only investigate a bait site but to make regular visits during daylight hours. Contrary to popular opinion by often uninformed individuals, maintaining a bear bait isn’t simple, isn’t easy, and is certainly not a sure way to fill a bear tag.

Bragging-size bear don’t get that large by being stupid, and since most gunners want at least a 200-pound bear or larger, certain techniques are required to bring these bigger bruins to your bait site rather than someone else’s. Location is a prime consideration, as is the style of container and method and frequency of baiting, not to mention the type of food being offered. There is another crucial aspect to establishing a productive bait drawing multiple visiting bear that many novice baiters and even some more experienced sports overlook.

Attractant scents

For any bait to be productive, bears first have to locate it, and as sensitive as a black bear’s nose is, addition of more powerful and enticing aromas will be necessary to advertise the free food. While a bear living within half a mile of the bait site might respond to the smell of food, a properly used attractant scent can carry 3-5 miles on the right wind. Once a bear travels from afar to investigate the enticing fragrance, then it will be close enough to smell the real food and a productive bait site is born. Each time a bruin visits a bait and gets the food on its paws, any other bear that crosses the first bear’s path will smell the food and can backtrack to the bait site. Soon it’s possible to have a bevy of bear using one location.

Grease is the easiest to obtain, simplest to use, and least expensive liquid fragrance producer. Every restaurant, fast food joint, and doughnut shop uses fryalators. They change the grease regularly, and the used grease smells and tastes wonderful to a bear. Even the driest bread becomes a taste treat when splashed with used cooking oil. Splashing two or three cups of the smelly French fry or doughnut cooking grease on nearby leaves and brush will allow the wind to advertise a bait-bucket location to a traveling bear.

Pouring a gallon of grease in front of the bait barrel, where a visiting bear has to step and stand to feed, assures that a savory trail of footprints will lead other bear back to the bait site. Every bear and every visit just expands the grease trail for other bruins to find and follow, so now we have an attractant scent spread via the breezes as well as by ground trails. An added benefit of fryalator grease is its ability to mask human scent to an extent. So on days a bait is to be hunted, spreading about a few extra cups of food-flavored oil will help cover the shooter’s presence.

Another old-time favorite that works as well today as it did 50 years ago to attract bear is oil of anise, and it too serves as a cover scent for human odor. Anise is a fairly thick, sweet fluid that exudes a licorice smell which carries well on the wind and is extremely enticing to bear. Available at sporting goods stores, especially those that sell trapping supplies, and sometimes at pharmacies, a two-ounce bottle sells for $7 to $10.

There are several effective methods of spreading the aroma of anise throughout a region. Putting a few drops on leaves or trees every couple of days will work, but the higher up the oil can be suspended so the wind can carry its aroma, the better. One wily old bear hunter I know stuffs a 35mm plastic film canister with cotton, then soaks the cotton with anise. He then tapes a long string to the side of the container and ties the end of the string to a stick, which he throws over a high tree branch. The anise-soaked cotton vial can then be pulled up and suspended near the bait barrel and lowered every few days to resoak the cotton with fresh oil of anise.

Some fellows soak 12-inch by 1-inch strips of cloth and tie one end to a high tree branch at two or three spots around the bait. I even know of one ingenious guy who diluted his anise with alcohol so he could use a squirt gun to spray it onto leaves much higher than he could reach! Whatever the means of application, oil of anise will coax bears from a long ways off to investigate the source, and perhaps one will be a trophy.

Fragrant foods

Watch any film on Alaska and you’ll see bears trying to catch salmon in the streams, so it only makes sense that black bears might like fish, too. The very first time I established my own bait site, I used fish as an attractant. Just go to the local grocery store and ask them to freeze any outdated packages of fish, as well as any fish heads and tails from salmon they cut up for the meat case. Most stores just throw this stuff away. If you have a friend who owns a restaurant, beg them to save and freeze their lobster shells for you.

Anytime you catch fish and keep a few, or when you enjoy a lobster dinner at home, bag and freeze all the remnants as well. Beg, borrow, or buy some of the mesh bags that onions often come in to use as “stink bait” containers, and believe me you’ll understand the name after only a week of baiting. Place several pieces of frozen fish and lobster shells into the mesh bag, tie the top securely closed, and suspend it with heavy twine high on a tree limb near the bait site.

Be sure and keep the bag away from the tree trunk so a bear or raccoon can’t climb up and grab it, and use a limb that won’t support a hungry animal’s weight. As soon as the fish thaws, the smell will carry on the wind, and once the contents begin to spoil it works even better. After a week the stench will bring tears to the eyes of a man with a terrible head cold, but the bears come running as if a dinner bell rang.

As everyone knows, bears like honey, too, and folks wishing to attract bears to a certain spot for hunting or photography purposes can do a honey burn. Once a location is selected, take a Coleman burner or can of Sterno, a frying pan, and a jar of honey to the site. Pour a quarter to half an inch of honey into the pan and begin to heat steadily. Soon the liquid will begin to bubble and then emit small puffs of smoke.

Continue heating until the honey boils, darkens, and smokes steadily. Wind will carry the sweet smoke into the trees and bushes where it will adhere and emit a smell for days. If possible, do a honey burn just after a rain or at least when there’s morning dew on the leaves, as the moisture will trap and hold the aroma and then allow it to dissipate into the wind over time.

Once the honey turns dark and begins to burn, flip the black, thickened pancake out onto the ground near the bait barrel. This fragrant disk will continue to work as an attractant for up to two weeks. Several sportsmen swear that when an active bait peters out, doing a honey burn almost always rejuvenates it.

Proven potions

Over the years I’ve read about, heard about, and tried several commercial bear attractants, but last season I discovered what has proven to be a sure thing. Bear Scents LLC produces a wide array of liquid and solid scents that draw bears from miles around to investigate the smell of these potent potions. Sprays are simple to apply and long-lasting while the 18-pound scent balls dissolve slowly for up to three months, baiting bears with fresh scent daily even when the outdoorsman skips a couple of visits.

Brad Hering developed Bear Scents while experimenting in his garage with attractor aromas for his own use. In just the last seven years, hunters from the U.S. and Canada have taken more than a dozen Boone and Crockett and Pope and Young trophy book bears while using Brad’s concoctions. Sixteen scents, such as anise, apple, bacon, blueberry, honey, raspberry, strawberry, shellfish, and wildberry, among others, are available in 16-ounce sprays, quart and gallon refills, and in 9-pound balls. Prices range from $12 to $50 and there are even sample packs with 4 ounces of every aroma.

I’ve seen these powerful attractants draw bears within an hour of being applied, and the smells have enticed five different bears in one evening. There’s no question the scents help cover human odor, too. Get more information online at www.bearscents.com or call toll free at 1-888-215-2327 to order and ask questions.

To assure consistent success drawing black bears to a bait site, turn to their most powerful sense, and sometimes their weakness. Put an attractive aroma that promises food into the air and let the wind work for you. Go with tried and true tactics or experiment with combinations of smells, but either way, making sense of scents will improve your bear sightings.

Outdoor feature writer Bill Graves can be reached via e-mail at bgravesoutdoors@ainop.com