Everyone wants to belittle the guy that fed it. Just know, it was not illegal to feed bears 17 years ago.
Well it HAS been illegal to feed bears for several years now. and daddy Bozo continued to do it.
And to use your words..... legal even back then does not equate to ethical. Any human who feeds a wild animal to the point that looses its natural fear of man is setting that animal up for disaster.
Yes, the guy who fed him deserves belittling. He deserves to be fined. He is the only one who violated the law and all he got was a warning. A good swift kick in the backside would be well deserved . He may not have sent the arrow, but if the situation went down as you insinuate, he contributed in the killing of that bear just as sure as the archer did.
BTW, Your "baiting deer" question doesnt apply here because they didnt shoot the bear over bait. The part of the game code regarding baiting allows a WCO a tremendous amount of subjectivity in this area. No distance is named. The WCO has considerable leeway to judge for himself if the animals pattern was affected in any way by the bait. From what I hear, most archery bear kills get looked at for just that very thing and there wasnt even a hint of a baiting issue raised regarding this kill.