Where are all the doughnuts?

Last Monday, most of us were busy mopping up whatever a downgraded but still mean Irene had blown our way – shelving once again our candles and lanterns, clearing tree limbs from the roads, returning boats to their moorings and furniture and grills to porch and deck. It was easy to miss what else Monday meant – the opening day of Maine’s bear hunting season.

We don’t get much bear hunting on the island. In fact, we don’t get many bears here. Hardly a summer passes though without at least one reported bear sighting. Sort of like the perennial spotting of a moose by someone somewhere on the island but which usually fails to materialize before another pair of eyes. Not that the presence of such beasts should surprise us, good swimmers that they are. Other sorts, like raccoons I suspect, may have to traipse across the bridge.

Maine is one of 27 bear-hunting states and is, thanks to a referendum several years ago, one of 18 states, including Alaska, Idaho, Wisconsin and neighboring New Hampshire, that allow bear-baiting. Only in fall though, since, apparently, no one much likes the idea of orphaned nursing cubs. And by baiting, we’re not talking about bears pawing through the dump or swiping the bird feeders from your yard. In states where baiting is legal, you can feed bears only if you’re trying to kill them.

Disclosure: I’m no hunter. I have never hunted. Closest I’ve come is hooking a few lake perch with my dad many years ago. I’m clearly of the gathering and seeds-in-the-ground part of the tribe. A trowel fits more naturally in my hand than a rifle. What hunters do and how they do it is foreign territory to me. And let’s be clear: I don’t begrudge them nor do I fail to recognize, sadly, the need for occasional culling and keeping out-of-kilter populations in check. Still, on its face, there’s something about bear-baiting that seems, well, unfair.

For weeks now – as I understand it – Mr. Bear has been lured to mounds of old doughnuts where he’s free to happily munch away. Until the last Monday in August comes along and suddenly – blam – Mr. Bear, muzzle deep in a sugary pile, is no more.

But hold on, say the bear hunters and most notably their guides, things aren’t that easy. It takes skill and hard work to bring down a wily bruin. And baiting, they say, is necessary. Bears, unlike other critters that prompt the camouflage and orange hats each fall, aren’t patterned. Meaning they don’t maintain customary and predictable travel routes. They’re unlike deer that establish trails in order to feed and bed down, and where, come November and usually in some trees at the edge of a field, a hunter will erect a stand. Bears are unpatterned largely because of their diet. Unlike plant-eating deer attracted to a specific place (and why does it seem too often like the part of my garden where phlox and lilies try to bloom?), bears are omnivores, drawn as much to berries, acorns and seeds as anthills and even roadkill. Bears will eat anything anywhere and often detour and stop along the way to wherever their keen noses direct them. At the very least, say baiting enthusiasts, stale doughnuts in a barrel help improve the odds. Others call it an “indispensable tool” in northern Maine’s dense timberland “too thick to hunt without bait.”

Also in baiters’ favor is that bear hunting, especially by way of guided outfitters, is big business in states like Maine. Landowners sell bait sites each season and guides and outfitters buy them up, turning a handsome profit by charging handsomely for each bear hunting trip. In 2009, of the 3,486 bears killed in Maine, 2,935 of them were shot over bait, most notably by large percentages of non-resident hunters. According to various sports reporters, the majority of these high powered rifle-toting out-of-staters are lured here by the promise of a hunt requiring skill, like, well, bears to old pastries.

To this novice a skilled hunt suggests active participation. And maybe a bear hunt does. But consider that hunting baited bears is called “sitting over bait.” And sit, and sit these hunters do. Environmental writer Ted Williams, armed only with a Nikon and sharing a bait station with George, a young hunter from Virginia, put it this way: “Together we watched garbage for five hours and 16 minutes, during which time we heard one red squirrel (which George identified as a circling bear) and saw and/or fed at least 750,000 black flies.” While the baiting debate usually centers on how fair it is to bears, Ted asks how fair is it to guys like George? Who’d saved his money after answering an ad for “bear hunting in Maine.” But who, claims Williams, hadn’t really hunted and what he’d seen of Maine “was mostly a spruce tree supporting an onion bag full of rotten meat.”

Yes, rotten meat, because doughnuts, it turns out, may be just one ingredient in a potent mix. Preferred by some hunters is “stink bait” – lobster heads, fish guts, bacon fat, meat scraps and bones. All doused with deep fat fryer grease, or, to satisfy a bruin’s noted sweet tooth, molasses or corn syrup. I can’t imagine sitting downwind from such a stew for hours, but I suspect the burgeoning makers of commercial bait have had some hands-on experience. Extolling baiters to “stop digging in the dumpsters,” they’ve come up with handy pre-packaged supplies  of “Wildlife Buffet,” “Smelly Beaver,” and “Jelly Bean.”

All this sure seems like a far cry from “fair chase” methods, or what I’d always envisioned a hunt to be: tracking, stalking, maybe hunkering near a known or suspected trail after having scouted and become familiar with the bears’ habitat. But this produces by far the smallest percentage of bear kills. Sitting over bait is still the most popular way to get your bear, maybe in part because it yields the highest kill rate over the shortest time span to the greatest number of hunters of, shall we say, a particular range of skill.  Still, from where I sit, it’s hard to see how such hunters, particularly those “from away” are seeing much of the state or are gaining keener hunting skills while sitting in a tree. It’s unlikely they develop much involvement or investment in the natural habitat. Isn’t it at least a tad more difficult to acquire a respect for a wild place and its wild inhabitants when blasting at a bear munching garbage?

Fairly or not, bear baiting likely fuels the image of such hunters as lazy or cruel. Just as those opposing it are portrayed as radical anti-hunters (“antis”) intent on getting a foot in the door toward taking away all guns. Here, “outa state” hunters are welcome, “outa state” antis are not. And given the example being set in Washington, it’s unlikely any middle ground can be achieved, between, says Williams, the positions of “Hell, yes!” and “Hell no!” Consider, he says, the views of two former governors who were considering legalizing bear baiting at the same time. Maine’s Governor Baldacci, after being briefed by the state’s Department of Fisheries Wildlife, proclaimed that without baiting, we’d be “unable to control the growth of the bear population that pressures bears into areas with high human populations.”  Up in Minnesota, Jessie Ventura painted things a bit more colorfully: “Going out there and putting down jelly doughnuts and Yogi comes up and sits there and thinks he’s found the mother lode for five days in a row, and you back-shoot him from a tree? That ain’t sport, that’s an assassination.”  

But then in matters of stacking the decks, who can best Alaska? There, aerial hunting is allowed, meaning you can shoot wolves from small planes and helicopters. Billed as part of a predator control program, the state’s Department of Fish and Game explains: “Some people have an interest in helping with wildlife management and want to do their share.” Truly.  

A final note: Just as I am about to post this comes word from a neighbor neither near-sighted nor delusional that yesterday he saw a bear cross our road and disappear into the woods on the other side. A deer hunter friend has assured me black bears are naturally shy and it’s unlikely I'll ever see it. I don’t know whether this comforts or disappoints, but I’m certainly hoping that here’s a Jessie’s Yogi who’s not developed a fondness for jelly doughnuts.