It seems like your addressing two different things Muley Hunter. One is why hunt bear? The other is why hunt over bait? I suppose people hunt bear because they want to get a bear. Different strokes for different folks. Different people get different things out of their style of hunting. I've mostly still hunted timber. A couple of years ago I started glassing during the deer hunt. Saw a lot more animals and observed and learned behaviors that I'd not observed before. Once I sat in a tree stand over a bear bait of a friend's (I hauled some more bait up to the site. It was a mile hike up a steep ridge to get it there. He told me to spend the evening). I didn't see a bear, but saw a lot of other wildlife and noticed other things that I wouldn't have if I'd just been passing through. It surprised me that it wasn't boring.

People have answered the question. But knowing why people do what they do and understanding it are different things. Some things are too outside of our own frame of reference to make much sense to us.