Congrats on being selected for the bear hunt. I love bow hunting for a bruin. Nothing like the excitement of climbing up your bear stand to see claw marks from where they climbed up to take a peak.......talk about getting your juices flowing. I am in Washington so the rules might be differeent...we can't bait anymore but when we could.......My partner and I started baiting the July 4th weekend for a Sep 1 opening date. We would bait every week. It usually took 3-4 weeks to get hit. About the second week in August we would bait every week depending on how hard the site was getting hit. We usually would bait everyday the last two weeks. We would sit in the stand the last two or three nights to see what we had coming in. You can get a general size of a bear by measuring the pad imprint, add an inch for how he would square out. Example: clear out a good area so you can get a print, doing what was mentioned above with the grease is a good way, get a good bear foot print, measure the large pad, say 4" add 1" and the bear hide would square out to 5 feet. I have found that different areas, different bears, like different food. You can't go wrong with pastries, baked goods, pies, cakes, cookies, and pour honey or syrup over plain bread. Use those crackly cookie containers out on the trail with a few cookies in them to let you know when a bear is close.