I do not hunt bear but have freinds that do.. They did get a few bears as they guide hunters. The biggest problem was the amount of nuts that were around. The bears were busy hitting the nuts and less on the baits. The year before they did awesome using some cherry pie filling in with the baits. This past year they didn't use the pie filling soI am not sure if that helped the year before or not. Also during the later part of the season some hound hunters were running hounds around the area they baited in. Good luck to you and hope you have some great success..