Washington Hunter
Well-known member
This one's for you Moosie:
The Last Supper: Bear Baiting on Federal Lands in the United States
Every fall, in national forests and on other federal lands in nine states, the bear-baiting season begins. Hunters drag not only themselves and their weapons into the woods, but also a mother lode of odorous foods. Not for themselves to snack on, mind you, but for the bears.
The bears don't know it, but it's likely their last supper.
Hiding in a tree or behind a blind, hunters lie in wait. They're waiting for the bears to take the bait—usually a large pile of food or a 55-gallon drum stuffed with edibles. Bears can feed at this free trough for days before taking a bullet, while others, specifically those deemed unworthy of hanging in someone's trophy room, can dine with impunity for the entire bear-hunting season.
The smorgasbord must seem like manna from heaven to the bears, who during the fall months typically feed for 15 hours a day to build fat reserves for a long period of winter hibernation. The scent of the animal carcasses, fruit, jelly doughnuts, and grease wafts through the forests, enticing the bears who become, if you pardon the expression, sitting ducks to these hunters with their modern compound bows and telescopic rifles.
For the mere act of eating, bears must pay the ultimate price: their lives. The hunters typically take the head and hide as trophies and, in rare instances, even pack out the meat, which usually turns out to be less food than what they came with.
Hunters are allowed to bait bears on United States property mostly because two of the four major federal land management agencies—the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM)—defer to the states to deal with hunting issues. As a result, nine states allow bear-baiting on federal lands, sometimes as a purported form of wildlife management, although Congress may soon step in and try to ban the baiting practice outright.
If Congress doesn't step up, the public can expect more scenes like the one described by District Ranger Robert Reese of the Bridger-Teton National Forest in Wyoming in 1993: "Forest personnel visited the [bait station] and found one-third of a horse stuffed in a barrel with the horses [sic] head tied to a nearby tree. The barrel was located 10 feet from a [snow melt] drainage. It was located near White Pine Resort. The owners were worried about bears being attracted to the resort and clients seeing the horse body stuffed into a barrel. This wasn't an experience the owners wished clients to have...Site also included many horse skulls and bones from previous years [sic] baiting that had never been cleaned up."
Bear baiting is banned in 18 of the 27 states that allow bear hunting. It persists, and is often the most efficient hunting method for bears, in Alaska, Idaho, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Utah, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. For instance, in Wisconsin in 2002, hunters killed 2,415 bears; those using bait accounted for 1,720 of the kills. In Maine, hunters killed a staggering 3,903 bears in 2001, and baiters took 3,173 of the animals.
Viewing the practice as unfair and unsportsmanlike, citizens have placed a series of anti-baiting initiatives on statewide ballots. In 1992, Colorado voters banned bear baiting (along with spring hunting and hound hunting) through a statewide initiative; they soundly rejected the argument that you need to bait and shoot bears to control the population. In 1994, Oregon voters followed suit; so did voters in Washington in 1996. That same year, in 1996, Massachusetts also voters passed an initiative to ban bear baiting.
"The federal government bans the baiting of migratory birds because it's unfair," states Wayne Pacelle, a senior vice president of The HSUS. "Most states ban the baiting of deer and elk and other big game for the same reason. There's no logical reason to allow such an unfair practice to persist in bear hunting."
U.S. Representative Jim Moran (D-VA) and other legislators have vowed to halt this practice on federal lands. Moran objects to bear baiting not only because it is inherently unfair to animals, but also because it contradicts federal policies on the feeding of bears.
The U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the National Park Service all publish materials telling the public not to feed bears. The Forest Service, for instance, puts out materials that warn: "Do Not Feed Bears!," "Bears Are Dangerous!," and "A fed bear is a dead bear."
In a letter to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the director of the Pacific Northwest Region of the National Park Service stated his opposition to baiting on national forest lands abutting Crater Lake National Park. The director wrote, "Biologically, there is no difference between a bait station and a dump. Bait stations habituate bears to human-generated food, contributing to the potential for conflicts between bears and people in the park."
Tom Beck, a hunter and a bear biologist with the Colorado Division of Wildlife, shares a similar opinion. "I firmly believe that baiting creates 'nuisance' bears," he says. "Black bears are naturally wary, instinctively avoiding close contact with humans. But large amounts of tasty food, easily obtained, defeats this wariness. By baiting, we create lazy bears who have been rewarded, not punished, for overcoming their fear of humans."
Bears accustomed to human foods raid campgrounds, break into cabins, approach people, and may even attack people. In Yosemite National Park, where too many visitors apparently violate the no-feeding policies, bears caused more than $630,000 in property damage in 1998; they broke into 1,100 cars in search of food.
There are thousands of bait stations legally set up on federal lands every year. "If state legislators are not willing to stand up to this small, vocal segment of the hunting lobby and ban baiting in their states, then the federal land managers and the Congress should step in and halt the practice on federal lands," says The HSUS's Pacelle.
The drum beat for banning baiting is rising. Not only have many states recently banned baiting, but there are nascent efforts to ban baiting by ballot initiative in Alaska and Maine. The Anchorage Daily News opined in 2002, "[Baiting] has all the sport of shooting fish in a barrel." Former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura had this to say just before he left office in January 2003: "Going out there and putting jelly doughnuts down, and Yogi comes up and sits there and thinks he's found the mother lode for five days in a row—and then you back-shoot him from a tree?....That ain't sport. That's an assassination."
The Duluth News Tribune, the largest newspaper in the northern region of Minnesota where most baiting occurs, agreed with Ventura and then added its own advice and condemnation: "Normal people should be outraged at these practices. Tell Congress members to support Moran's bill for federal lands...In the meantime, bear hunters who set out sweets to attract your kill: Take a good hard look in the mirror. See if you can find a human being."
