Ways to hunt pa/md/va Bear other then a drive...?

[Hempfieldhunter]

I hunted this year and just used a 30-30 ... sat on a rock in a place I had never been before and hoped for the best... NEXT year I wanna bag one... what should I look for? what do beds look like? what do thwey eat in late November? can i pattern them? Any info is helpful, and if u know of any good websites, please let me kno... thanks!

[adams]

Welcome hempfield,

I'm not sure if it's legal to bait in PA but that may be an option. Another would be to look for natural feed. Later in the year mast crops are favored. Acorns and beech nuts will make up a significant portion of a bears diet. If it's not to late for for berries, raspberries and blueberries are apealing to bears. Probably best of all if you can find an oats field that hasn't been picked. Bears love oats and bear sign will be quite visiable. bears will mat down the oats when they lay and feed in the fields. Find a field they're eating in, find their enterance to the field and hunt it.

Good luck on your quest for bears.

[leftmehangin]

I would suggest a bigger gun then a 30-30. You wait all this time for a bear and your using a marginal gun not smart. For the hunting adams pretty much coverd that.

[vtbuckrulrss]

for hunting in your area, i would say it should be easy.. go to your oak forests, your apple orchards, preferably those that are wild, but most of all CORN FIELDS. you won't mistake the damage a bear will make in that corn field for a racoon, that's for sure. and if you can sit there, even for just a few nights, in a row, if the conditions are right, you'll have it. corn first, apples second, nuts third for me. find a spot with two out of the three available, and you'll really have something happening. and remember, they like their corn just like we do, ripe, but generally not early. around here in vt, apples around the beginning of the season, or berries and nuts( early sept), corn, then apples from mid sept on.

[bearklr]

hempfieldhunter, I too live in hempfield and hunt bear here in Pa. We hunt Lycoming county and generally get 2 or 3 bear a year. In my past experiences I have found that bear have an extremely large home range and may not visit a certain feeding area for days. We usually find an area high up the mountain early in the morning. I try and pick a hollow where I can see a fairly long ways. If I'm lucky I may find some droppings to alert me to a bears presence in the area but not often. Another way I have found to be promissing is just to walk the sides very slowly. When we put on drives it is ALWAYS the drivers who see the bear first and have a shot. They don't have any predators other than us so they are usually not in a hurry to get away once you see them. I also look under laydowns and in den sites if I find any as during that time of year they may be getting ready to hibernate depending on the temeratures. I spoke with a game warden in Lycoming county a few years back when the harvest was lower and he informed me that the majority of the bears they had collars on were already denned up before the season opened. We have also taken a few when there was snow on the ground and we can track them. Basically bear hunting here in Pa is pretty tough, your best bet is to find an area that is heavily populated and talk to some locals to see if they can point you in the right direction.

[jjwillie]

I hunt just north in Potter County and we usually take a couple bear per year. What we do is find draws or small ravines that contain thick cover. Once the shooting starts, the bear will go to the thickest parts of the woods because they offer the most security. We usually position stands at the tops of these draws to hunt all day. With all the people driving bears the first day, it definitely has paid off as the bears look to go towards the heavy cover.

[bearklr]

jjwillie, I wish we could do that where we are but it's pretty tough. The entire top half of the mountain is thick with laurel. You could be 5 feet from a bear and never even know it.

[barbs]

Don't listen to "leftmehanging"........a 30-30 is lots to kill a black bear. .....150grain inside 200 yards....(which i assume will be no problem when hunting in the bush.........inside 50yards is a good possibility)........will do the jod quite easily........i've killed 2 with a 100g from a .243win.......i dont see why everyone wants to blow their game to pieces all the time....

[billythekidrock]

A 30-30 is more than enough if you know how to shoot. My wife has killed two with her lever action while still hunting.

If it is as thick as you say it is, I would look for likely food sources then call them in.
Calls I would reccommend are any style predator call that replicates a rabbit (but blow ten times harder and longer) fawn/calf in distress and cub in distress.

[BDOA]

If the bush is thick, most deff, use a 30-30, I carry one with me into every baitsite, exelent close quarters gun..