SEBEC – Wells Shealy stood off to the side, holding his instant camera. The lanky 16-year-old gazed in silence at the hulking bear carcass that hung from a wooden frame while being skinned.

Shealy could have been any local kid out in the woods during bear season, which began last Monday, Aug. 27, and continues through Nov. 24. As it was, the South Carolina youth had come to the edge of the North Woods with his father, Dr. Fred Shealy, a surgeon and owner of a cattle ranch. Young Wells was the reason his father had returned to the hunting camp after 20 years.

Fred Shealy had been to Wayne Bosowicz’s Foggy Mountain Camp in the 1980s after a friend discovered it in a hunting magazine. A bowhunter, he never got a bear. But he saw one of the storied bruins, got a close-up look at a giant moose, and left the state committed to return when he had a son old enough to hunt bears on his own.

Shealy and his son are part of a growing number of sportsmen who travel from far away for the thrill of hunting Maine’s bears. Out-of-staters tend to be more successful in the hunt than Maine residents because most hire guides. So even though only half of the state’s bear hunters came from other states last year, three-quarters of the 3,951 bruins taken were killed by people from away.

With an estimated 23,000 bears in Maine, state bear biologist Craig McLaughlin said there are plenty for hunting, and each year there are more and more interested hunters. In the past five years, bear permits have increased 25 percent, reaching a high of 12,737 last year. McLaughlin estimates bear hunters sink about $12 million into the state’s economy.

Most out-of-staters last year came from Pennsylvania (1,412), followed by Massachusetts (881), New York (681), New Jersey (403) and Connecticut (345).

For many of the out-of-staters, the mystique in the hunt is in the fear factor.

“I’ve hunted deer. But bear can do a lot more harm than a deer,” said Scott DeYoung of North Carolina. “They actually bite back.”

DeYoung, a 47-year-old consultant for the race car industry, had hunted only small game before coming to Foggy Mountain, but after he met Bosowicz at a National Rifle Association convention in North Carolina in 1999, he decided to hunt Maine’s black bears.

Most years, nearly three-quarters of the bears killed in Maine during the hunt are lured with bait often stored in a hollowed-out log. To assure the likelihood of a bear coming to a bait site, the area is stocked with lard, cakes and other bakery products during the course of a month or more starting in late July. Then, the hunters climb into tree stands in the late afternoon or evening where they await their quarry.

Last Monday, DeYoung saw two bears at the bait below his stand. One looked as big as 400 pounds, which is significant given that the average adult black bear is 150 pounds. Even with 30 years’ experience, DeYoung said, he was too overwhelmed to shoot.

“I was scared. The fact it came in that close in the woods,” DeYoung said. “It followed a smallish bear in and totally ignored the bait. I had great trepidation. That was the first bear I ever saw in the wild,” he said, adding, “I’ve never been in the wild.”

DeYoung estimates the trip to the Sebec camp for him and his wife, who did not hunt, cost a total of $2,000, and he said it was worth every cent.

Bosowicz charges $995 for six days of lodging and five days of hunting, as well as an additional $75 for land access – to defray the cost of his lease for the woodland where his bait sites are located.

Bosowicz said nearly 100 percent of his customers are from out of state, with many arriving from New York, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, North Carolina, Maryland and Virginia. His customers come from all economic backgrounds, he said, the one uniting factor being their love of hunting.

In his shiny brown cowboy boots, a black T-shirt advertising his “Three Arrows Cattle Company,” and his signature foxtail hat, Dr. Shealy stood with his son by the giant bear carcass and related his adventures at California’s famous Pebble Beach golf course with celebrities like Clint Eastwood, the Gatlin brothers, and his friend, CBS sports commentator Ben Wright.

Yet Shealy said he prefers to be alone hunting in the woods than talking to Hollywood stars.

Tim Conrad of New Holland, Pa., is regularly employed as a bounty hunter by federal marshals. But he prefers his part-time work as a hired driver for the Amish in Pennsylvania because many of his trips are to go hunting. Conrad was in Maine last week hunting bear with four Amish men.

The five Pennsylvanians can hunt bear in their home state, and they have, but not using bait, because it is illegal there. So their chances of bagging a bruin in Pennsylvania are far less than in Maine, where both bait and hunting with dogs is allowed.

Bosowicz, who has a few hundred bait sites in the woods from Sebec to Greenville and Millinocket, helped make them all believers that a rookie bear hunter can have success here.

Last Monday one of the Amish men, Levi, a farmer who declined to provide his name, took a 420-pound monster. Tuesday, Conrad shot a bear of similar weight.

“I had a house built three years ago and I made sure to have big walls so I could hang trophies on it,” Conrad said. “This rug will be hung on one of the walls,” he said, pointing to a pile of fur under a nearby bear carcass.

The Shealys left Bosowicz’s camp Wednesday without even having seen a bear. But they didn’t care.

“It’s not about killing. It’s the outdoors, sportsmanship,” Shealy said.

They’ve hunted ducks in Georgia, South Carolina and Missouri, but Fred Shealy said he wanted Wells to hunt bears in Maine, to experience the outdoors here.

”The woods here are different,” Shealy said. “Where we are it’s all developed with housing projects and golf courses. This is very unpopulated.”

Hours before he and his father left the camp, Wells Shealy considered the time he had passed sitting in a tree stand alone in the “wilderness,” without even having seen a bear.

“I’d like to come back and work here,” he said, satisfied. “Bring my mountain bike. Help with the bait.”

Deirdre Fleming covers outdoor sports and recreation for the NEWS. She can be reached at 990-8250 or at dfleming@bangordailynews.net.