So Missouri now has a black bear season, and I just bought property in the middle of bear country in January.  The bear season is in mid to late October.

I have hunted deer, elk, just about every bird there is.  So my question is what should I put out to draw in bears to hunt?

Picnic Basket?

In NC you cannot bait bear.  We run them with dogs.

Small cabins with porridge and three beds, one that is too hard, one that is too soft and one that is juuuuuust right.  But it may also attract little thieving blonde girls that will eat the food and sleep on one of the beds.

Of course Missouri legalized bear, a year after I left Springfield...

$24 tag here, no regrets!

I had a couple co workers that lived out by Sparta and Chadwick that had bears on their game cams almost nightly without any kind of bait or food plots on their property.  I never saw any bear sign on public land (hunted around McClurg and off Glade Top), best bet may be talking to land owners and looking for nuisance animals.

@thorshammerblow

Did you hunt any bear?

Disclaimer:  I have never shot a bear and have very little hunting experience with them.

My friend baits for both bear and deer during their respective baiting seasons.  In NH, bear season starts September 1rst and runs through mid to late November, but baiting is only allowed for the first month or so.

Bear go to where there is the most food.  If your property is surrounded by corn fields, then you will have a problem attracting the bear as they will sit in the corn and eat that all day and night.  If you have little farmland around you, then you’re in luck.  

You can keep it clean with whole or cracked feed corn, black oil sunflower seeds, and pour some molasses on top of it.  They love anything sweet.  Some hunters will supplement with stale donuts they get for free from donut shops.  You can also buy bulk pop tarts to satisfy their sweet tooth.  

The trick is to put out just enough to get them to keep coming back to the feed site, but not so much that they gorge themselves and then you don’t see them for 3 days.

You also have to contend with every damn critter that wants to eat from the pile.  A lot of people will use barrels chained to a tree with feed in it and cut an opening which is then blocked by a some wood fire logs that the bear needs to manipulate out to get to the food.  This helps to reduce the raccoons raiding all the food since they can’t move the wood.  

Birds will raid the food during the daytime.

One method is to feed a certain amount regularly during the daytime to get them coming in during legal shooting hours.  Bears will even wait out of sight in the woods for the food and come out when they know it is coming regularly.  

Next year, we are timing the time off to include the several days after the corn fields are cut so the bear will be more likely to visit the feed pile.

Donuts. They love ‘em.

Some donut shops will let you leave a garbage can and they will fill it during the week. Then you bring it to the bears on the weekend.

Yes you can in NC, just has to be unprocessed.  We use Peanuts and I can keep them out of my deer feeders with corn.

I did not get a lottery tag