ORIGINAL: game4lunch
For spring bear I like to hang carp in a burlap bag high in the same tree my bait barrel is attached to. In the barrel however, are sweets. Doughnuts, donuts, dooooooonuts! Then I'll pour molassis around barrel. Al these arromatic attractants will bring them in. You just need to be there when they do! That is another problem. I'd like to someday be able to afford a game cam that shows time and date, point it at bait, take pic's of bears coming in, and try to get a handle on the bears patterns.
Probably the only time I'd use a tree stand too. Not comfortable sitting in a ground blind with hungry baby toten' mama bears coming in for a free snack!
We just use cheap $15.00 trail timers; they show day and time so you know when the bait is getting hit. I have seen a bait hit at 3:00 am and then a bear will hit it the next day at 3:00 pm so you can't just hunt by a timer. I think that bears are travelling a lot in the fall trying to put a lot of weight on and various bears are hitting the same bait. On a spring hunt though my bait was never getting hit while I hunted the afternoon till dark but would be hit by the time I came the next day to hunt. I put a trail timer on it and it said 10:30 am. The next day I was in my stand at 8:00 am. At 10:15 a bear came in, so sometimes they are patternable.