RE: Bear bait!!!
Marlin 450-
Not sure how much bear baiting you do but we have had MUCH better success using the bags of Agway feed/grain mix and chinese food restaurant grease mix over the donut/pastry mix in the drums. I can' t remember who we bought the barrels from, it was in RI if I recall, but the bear activity was horrible at the baits we used it on. Some still got hits .. but not nearly as many as the grain and grease ones .. and when we finally quit trying with the donuts and cleaned the rotten stuff out of the barrels and switched mid season to grain and grease EVERY barrel was hit better.
It may have been we got 12 barrels of rotten donuts .. but I think it is because they had good natural feed choices last year and choose natural over rotten donuts ... but they choose grain and grease over natural which IMHO makes a better bait. Plus it is much easier to get.
I' ll ask my friend if he remembers where in RI we got the barrels though.
What state are you going to be hunting?