Like I said before Kyle, good stuff in your baiting regimen. Here's how I go about it, not to much different then the way you go about it.


My 1st week of baiting my main goal is to get the stink out and get the scent in the air and bring some bear in. The way I go about it is I go out and catch some fish (catfish and bullheads preferably) about 2 months before baiting. I then take these fish and put them in a black 5 gallon pail whole (not cleaned) and put a little water in it and slam the cover on it and let it sit in the sun and ferment. This stuff is nasty come middle of August when baiting starts. This is what I use for an attractant to get the stink out, It works well.

The bait I use- Meat scraps (beef) from the butcher shops, lots of grease, molasses, bread, pastry's, code blue scents, liquid smoke, fish stink I described, and other stuff I can't think of right now.

When looking for an area to put a bait up I look for dark, thick, low areas. To me bear feel much more comfortable in a dark/thick and cool area. When I bait I hang a burlap sack in a tree about 8' feet up. Reason I do this is to see what size of bear or bears I've got hitting my bait. The more claw marks on the tree the smaller the bear, less claw marks the bigger the bear, no claw marks (I'm real excited then)!! I then put bait on the ground below the same tree the sack is in. I pile meat in one spot, bakery goods in another spot. I don't mix them up being some bear only like one or the other. Bear are very finicky/picky eaters. After I'm done with that I'll then stack the biggest logs I can find and stack them on top of the bait nice and straight. I position the logs to how I want the bear to come in according to my stand tree. Another thing too I make sure my logs are stacked as neat as possible. Reason being I've seen some monster bear come in and just move one log a tiny bit and then leave. Allot of times the big guys will do that so thats why I stack my logs perfect so I know when I come back if there a tad out of place somethings up, and its usually a good thing! Multiple bear, small bear or cubs allot of times will have your logs laying in every which way direction spread all over. After the logs are in place I'll take the fish stink and pour it into an ice cream pale and fling it away from the bait up into a tree to get the scent out. The higher the better. Before I leave I'll take the grease and or molasses and dump at least 5 gallons of it on the ground around by the bait. The bear will then track this every where they go. When I walk back to my pickup I'll tie a string onto a sack and dip that sack into my molasses pail and then drag that sack all the way back to the truck on the walk in trail. I usually have a spray bottle as well full of code blue vanilla scent that I spray at the bait and on the trail all the way back to the truck. Last year was my 1st year doing allot of burns. I would put the code blue vanilla scent into a coffee can along with some grease and do a little burn while baiting my bait at the bait site. I had bear coming in 10 minutes after I would leave last year doing this, camera's don't lie, there so nice! Last year was my 1st year using one. This year I got another idea from ElkCrazy (thanks bud) on doing a different burn. I'm really excited to see how this stuff works ans smells come next weekend when I start baiting.

I forgot to add this that the 1st week of baiting I usually use about 70lbs of meat and two 5 gallon pales full of bakery goods if I can get them per bait. I run about 15 baits or so. This year though I'm going to try something different. I'm going to bring in about 150lbs of meat per bait instead the 1st week to try and get more bear at the bait to create more competition and thus this should keep them less nocturnal then. We'll see if it works but I'm guessing its going to work well.

I know I'm missing a few stuff but this is how I go about it my 1st week baiting.