I just fill my backpack with doughnuts and go sit in the woods. The bears come to me.

:)

Game commission would probably cite you for that. When we hunt bear, we sit in a promising-looking spot and hope one walks by. :D

Tried a few drives, but never had enough guys to do it right.

My defense is that I'm a growing boy and I need to carry a really big lunch.

Muley is right about using a predator call on bears. It works out here. Maybe not so much in PA though.

Our bear season is 4 days long. There are some extended seasons in some parts of the state. That season was Dec 2-7 this year. Far too late in the season IMO, especially in the northern mountains. It was 0 degrees Saturday night and there's often a ton of snow by then. Bear's den up. The plus is that we don't shoot pregnant females. They're already denned up. We do have a short archery bear season, but that's in November, too.

I learned something today...... Sows den up before the boars do. Never knew that but I'm not really a bear hunter. The mountains around my place are full of them but I probably haven't seen more than a dozen or so in my life.

Sows give birth in the den so they will den up based on when the cubs should be born, weaned and how old they should be when they emerge in the spring. Timing is more strict for sows.

Boars will stay out as long as they can find food. When we have a banner beech nut crop, boars will stay out into mid-December. Regardless of how cold it is. I imagine 3 feet of snow would end the party early no matter what other variables.

Interesting info. Makes sense.

Sows with cubs also stay in the den longer. Nature makes sure the boars and barren sows leave the dens first and begin to feed. That way when the sows bring the cubs out it is safer for the cubs. Bear can be cannibals when they are really hungry and it isn't unknown or even unusual for boars to target cubs. If they have been actively feeding a couple weeks they are less likely to kill and eat a cub.

This is why they schedule the spring hunts when they do. The season is over by the time the cubs come out. It is very rare to see the cubs during the season. I used to hunt CO's spring season a lot before the bunny huggers shut it down and I don't think I saw more then 3 or 4 cubs in all the time I hunted the spring. Of course, it was the very slight possibility of orphaned cubs that the bunny huggers used to stop the season. We had a lot fewer bear problems back then too.

Bears don't usually eat meat when first coming out of the den in spring. They need to get their system working again, and eat a lot of greenery.

A friend in AK tells me the first thing bears do when coming out of hibernation is go to snow slides and scavenge winter killed animals. He says it's the best place to hunt during spring bear seasons.