I have done a lot of bear hunting via baiting, but there is a huge problem for anyone who is hunting hours of driving away from home: how to continue the baiting process for a few weeks without having to actually be there every day yourself.
I figured what I needed was something which was NON_ELECTRICAL (just my preference) which would operate as follows: there is a steel cable strung between two trees too high for the bears to get at from the ground, from which maybe a dozen small cans of bear bait are hung on the 'triggers', as described below. The idea is that you want a can of bait to fall maybe every day or so for two weeks. this way the bears get trained to come looking on a regular basis.
So i devised the following trigger: take a 1 inch by 7 inch steel pipe, threaded on one end, and a steel screw-on cap. Drill holes in the top of th epipe to thread the steel wire through. Drill a hole through the centre of the cap wide enough to allow a threaded hook to freely move in and out (the shaft of the hook of course, not the hook itself). Drill a hole or two just above the base of the cap. Wrap the side of the pipe where the holes are with duct-tape several times. Tape the hooked bolt in place inserted to the max in the pipe.
Holding the pipe in a jar or some other device, make a batch of rock candy and pour it into the pipe. After it cools, remove the duct tape so the candy is exposed in the holes drilled in the side of the pipe. The hook is held firm like it is encased in concrete, exactly like re-bar.
Hang the trigger from the steel cable, then hand teh bait can from the 'trigger'.
Eventually two things will cause the hook to slide out: the action of water, and the action of insects. Rain gets in and starts to dissolve the cansy, and ants and wasps will find the candy and start eating, eventually to the point where it gives way.
To vary the dropping time, if you have a series of triggers with holes for the insects at various heights, and fill the pipe with candy only up to that point, you will have the triggers with less candy falling faster than the others.
I've tried it, and it works, sort of, but it is hard to get any precision. Teh ants were there almost immediately, first small guys, then bigger guys came in and shooed them away. It wasn't until day 3 that the wasps came in, and they kicked everyone else oughtts there! Problem is in one pipe they stopped eating and started building a nest.
I am wondering if I used a pipe threaded on both ends, and dispensed with the drilled holes altogether if just the action of, say, 3/4 of a pipe filled with water, 1/4 with candy woyuld eventually dissove/weaken the candy to the point where the trigger would be released?-- marquisdenet, Sep 20 2011 http://www.flickr.c...2775/in/photostream [marquisdenet, Sep 20 2011] Adorable black bear http://www.youtube....channel_video_titleToo bad you can't hunt in Yellowstone [sarcasm] [DIYMatt, Sep 22 2011] aniseed balls............... http://www.bbc.co.u...s/53/a4376153.shtmlfnaar fnaar... [not_morrison_rm, Sep 22 2011] and I will hug him and pet him and call him George... http://www.youtube....watch?v=ceb9N-Y1v6A [2 fries shy of a happy meal, Sep 22 2011] Adorable black bear (attacks my uncle) http://www.youtube....watch?v=fBzHCAzE_dsAt the end, you can see the rip in his pants from the bear's claw. [DIYMatt, Sep 22 2011] Brown bears aren't as friendly http://www.youtube....watch?v=OOYuucE3HroSome idiots almost getting their still-beating hearts ripped out through their mouthes by grizzly bears. My youtube channel is mostly bears. [DIYMatt, Sep 22 2011] The problem is that, whilst this allows you to bait the bears from the comfort of your armchair, you still have to venture out to shoot them.
There are two possible solutions to this problem. The first option would be to replace the fourth or fifth bait with a grenade. Bears are curious, and the resulting explosion should be satisfyingly audible from a good distance.
The second would be to go for an internet- enabled system and forget the insect-powered devices altogether. What I'm envisioning here is an IP-enabled bait delivery and gun system coupled with a webcam. With suitable software, you'd be able to bait and shoot from your iPhone.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Sep 20 2011 hmmm. Baiting is poaching around these parts.
That's like putting a salt-lick twenty feet from your porch. A fine thing if you're starving and need to feed you and yours but it's easy enough to find bears without having to trick them.
I don't likes it.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Sep 20 2011 State laws vary - it may be perfectly legal in his territory. Public and private property also factors in.
As for sport and honor those things can be negotiated all day long. Generally the prey targeted is not impressed by any of the arguments.-- normzone, Sep 21 2011 Real men only naked with a sharpened stick. And no bait!-- DIYMatt, Sep 21 2011 Bears have claws, so we have to make it even somehow
*opens penknife-- DIYMatt, Sep 21 2011 no, no.-- xandram, Sep 21 2011 Obviously what's needed here is a pic-ah-nic-ah basket.-- RayfordSteele, Sep 21 2011 // Real men naked with no weapons whatsoever. That is the only truly fair way to hunt. //
So put your money where your mouth is. Go out into the wilderness with nothing but a leather thong strapped around your scrotum and come back dragging the carcass of a bear that you killed armed with nothing but your supreme masculinity.
I hear a whole lot of 'real men hunt with a knife' or 'real men hunt with spears', but it's crap! Other hunters have even given me $#!t when they see my hunting rifle, a custom 6.8mm AR-15, because 'real men hunt with a (insert traditional hunting rifle)'. Forget that I built my own gun, forget that I can take the neck off of a beer bottle without knocking it over at 300 yards, forget that every animal I've ever taken was a one-shot kill, because apparently I'm not a real man because I hunt using technology that my spear-toting ancestors would have fought wars to posess.
Rant concluded. Thank you for your time.
Oh, and this too: yes, bear-baiting is legal in many states, and no, I don't think it's very sporting, but I don't hunt bear, so it's not really a big deal for me.-- Alterother, Sep 21 2011 This seems an extremely tame sort of bear-baiting compared to the traditional English variety.-- mouseposture, Sep 21 2011 //there's a good chance it'll rip my heart out before it succumbs to the wound my rifle inflicted.// Don't stand so close. Remember the 100 yard rule: stay 100 yards from bears.-- DIYMatt, Sep 21 2011 Bah. You can almost pet the dang things, but why would anyone want to eat one unless they had to. I mean bear heart's not bad, kinda like tough pot roast actually, but there's way better meat for eating.
On a side note I can't knock the top off of a beer bottle at three hundred yards and I don't hunt because I am the biggest jinx you've ever seen. I think I give off RUN BAMBI! vibes.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Sep 22 2011 //Bah. You can almost pet the dang things// True, but lets hope it's a friendly blackbear [link]-- DIYMatt, Sep 22 2011 Yeah the black one's are friendly. I've heard that a Grizzly can keep attacking for quite a while after it has been shot in the heart.
On a side note there was an old guy here mauled by a Grizzly. He managed to open his buck knife and, (old guy not grizzly), stabbed it in the eye and the jugular and lived through it. I forget the number of broken bones and the length of hospital stay, but can you imagine that story for the grandkids? And the bragging rights?
"My grandpa can kick your grandpa's dogs ass!"-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Sep 22 2011 Hmm, shades of the aniseed balls used by ww2 frogmen, they dissolved very predictably and were used for timers on limpet mines. So, maybe use them in a sealed tube with water. See link, if I can be bothered.
Me, I'd be more worried about finding the bearskin on wheels, with a long piece of string on it. Y'know, the one that the bears are using to train you to stand and aim from just the one location..-- not_morrison_rm, Sep 22 2011 // On a side note there was an old guy here mauled by a Grizzly. He managed to open his buck knife and, (old guy not grizzly), stabbed it in the eye and the jugular and lived through it. I forget the number of broken bones and the length of hospital stay, but can you imagine that story for the grandkids? And the bragging rights? //
I, too, know a man (a much-loved former mentor) who was attacked by a grizzly and killed it with a knife by severing the spinal cord at the base of the skull, which he still has in his office. It's not unheard of, just very rare and luck-dependent.
// Yeah the black one's are friendly. //
If you test this theory, please film it. I could use a good laugh.-- Alterother, Sep 22 2011 They are all friendly, right up until they aren't. [link]-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Sep 22 2011 Same goes for Halfbakers. Are Halfbakers like bears?-- Alterother, Sep 22 2011 Well I've been close enough to pet both but have refrained. Does that count?-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Sep 22 2011 When my uncle was about 7, my grandpa told him to stand next to a black bear while he filmed it. The bear swiped him, but he was thrilled to get swiped by a bear so could brag about it. The next link up there is him standing next to the bear, unfortunately it ends a second before the swiping [link]-- DIYMatt, Sep 22 2011 For the busy hunter, how about something that dispenses bears?-- MaxwellBuchanan, Sep 22 2011 The automatic bear dispenser is already baked. They're called sows.-- Alterother, Sep 22 2011 Aniseed balls, gotta look that up. You can't stalk bears where I am, you can see all of 10 feet ahead of you. I eat every bear I kill, best meat ever. Roast it after a day of marinating.
Sporting Schmorting, not very sporting then I guess to eat your hamburgers and steaks! I love non-hunters pulling up to the McDonalds drive -through trying to lecture ME on sporting! Hell of a lot of work in baiting bears. The difficulty is in the prep maybe, more so than the actual hunt, so what? Eating hunted meat is the most ethical eating of all. Animals live out their lives in nature, not in some factory-farm hell. Best for the environment, healthiest meat.
I did go on a stalkng hunt, tell you THAT was a hell of a lot easier than baiting. But regardless, I don't hunt to be 'sporting', whatever the heck that means.-- marquisdenet, Sep 23 2011 //Go out into the wilderness with nothing but a leather thong strapped around your scrotum //
Only works if you killed the animal that supplied the leather by hand AND tanned the leather in the traditional Eskimo fashion by using unweaned babies' urine.-- marquisdenet, Sep 23 2011 //I was just wondering, where in the spectrum of "not dead and unharmed to being utterly dead and mutilated" does sport appear ?//
Oh, somewhere after the fourth hour of the third day of sitting dead still being eaten alive by mosquitos and black flies-- marquisdenet, Sep 23 2011 Ah! You must be British. I remember when I lived there I was told by a snobboish acquaintence with his nose in the air how they considered the pump action shotgun 'unsporting'. I was taken aback. I then inquired what kind of hunting he did, and soon learned that his version of shooting is standing and shooting while birds are released!
To each his own I guess, but I maintain that going out and getting your own meat is always more sporting than buying it in a supermarket.-- marquisdenet, Sep 23 2011 // I eat every bear I kill, best meat ever. //
Subsistence hunting. Eat, use, wear. You have this Heathen's respect, sir. If I didn't find bear greasy, foul- tasting, and nearly as tough as moose, I'd hunt them, too, but I'm not going after one just for a pelt, much less a stuffed head.
I understand sport hunting. It's been going on for hundreds of years, ever since a man had the free time and surplus food to hunt for fun and a place to put a trophy. It brings extra revenue to my state and it doesn't offend me enough for me to make a huge stink about it, but I don't like it. I won't go on sport hunts (prefer to hunt alone anyhow), and I detest baiting. If you're not good enough to track an animal, IMHO you have no business hunting it. Frankly, bear are easier to track than deer in the Fall when they're on the move.
// I was just wondering, where in the spectrum of "not dead and unharmed to being utterly dead and mutilated" does sport appear ? //
Good question. Never cared for taxidermy either. I have deer skulls on my wall; does it count as a trophy if it's used for decoration only because I can't eat it?-- Alterother, Sep 24 2011 Yes, I can go to the store. So I'm not a true subsistence hunter. I'm a supplementary hunter. Beef is expensive. Venison wanders around in the hills behind my house. Harder to find, but much cheaper (yes, my home-built tech-encrusted rifle was fairly expensive, but I would have built it anyway; hunting with it is just a bonus).-- Alterother, Sep 24 2011 // Harder to find //
Unless, apparently, you are riding a motorcycle ...-- 8th of 7, Oct 02 2011 "Harder to find" should probably be "harder when you find it..."-- normzone, Oct 03 2011 random, halfbakery