Last year at this time, we raised concerns about the petition to ban the bear hunting methods of hounding, baiting and trapping. Since then, the petition gathered 80,000 signatures statewide, and the issue is now set to appear on the November ballot as Question 1: “Do you want to ban the use of bait, dogs or traps in bear hunting except to protect property, public safety, or for research?”
For those who are unfamiliar with these methods, here’s a brief description:
Ӣ Hounding: Hunters use trained dogs to track down, chase and tree a bear, at which point a hunter can locate the dogs via GPS collars and shoot the treed bear.
Ӣ Baiting: Guides haul in large piles of human foods to attract bears, wait for them to appear at the site, and shoot them.
Ӣ Trapping: Snares are set to constrict only to a certain size and detain the animal until the hunter returns to shoot it.
Maine has a significant hunting tradition that is a part of life for many families, but for most Maine hunters, these methods are not part of their family tradition.
It’s hard to imagine a self-respecting, lifelong, traditional Maine woodsman calling himself a hunter when all he does is shoot a feeding, treed or trapped animal point-blank. When we think of hunting here in Maine, stalking is what comes to mind, which is the method of deer hunting, in which the hunter needs to be properly clothed, eliminate his or her scent, pay attention to droppings and tracks, and remain quiet as they line up the shot.
Stalking an animal takes skill, patience and perseverance. The image of a person shooting an exhausted, terrified black bear with nowhere to hide or nowhere left to run, or even an unsuspecting bear feeding at a pile of discarded food is not only sickening ”“ it’s not hunting. That’s why bear baiting purveyors can draw in completely inexperienced out-of-staters to wait at established bait sites and take home a trophy kill.
Trapping and hounding are not popular ways to hunt bear, for a variety of reasons, and we continue to support the elimination of these methods, as both are inhumane. Traps only need to be checked once every 24 hours, which can leave an animal tormented for a lengthy period of time, and even though the snares no longer have cutting teeth, they can still result in the loss of a paw or digits as the animal attempts to escape. Hounding, while it requires significant time commitment in training dogs, places both the hunting dogs and the bear in danger as they confront one another.
Baiting appears to be the least offensive of the three, and is by far the most popular and easiest. The Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife has said it’s the only feasible way to manage the bear population, but it’s having negative consequences. It’s illegal to bait deer, and to feed wild animals in general, due in part to concerns about habituating them to human foods and causing them to proliferate beyond sustainable levels. Those very issues are happening with the bears due to baiting, however, with an ever-growing population, and it’s time for it to stop. If deer can be hunted in Maine by stalking, so can bears.
Our revered 26th President, Theodore Roosevelt, was famous for his outdoorsmanship and hunting prowess and is remembered in part for refusing to shoot a restrained bear that his guide had tied up for him after an otherwise unsuccessful hunt. A true hunter sees no honor in killing an animal that is restrained, or in sniping it at a feeding site.
However we may feel about these methods, our decisions on public policy need to be based on facts and science, not on emotions. If we ban these three methods of bear hunting, will Maine be over-run with nuisance bears threatening our communities? The experiences of other states that have banned these methods in favor of stalking suggest otherwise. Studies show that the State of Washington saw a stable bear population, but a greater harvest of bears after these methods were banned there in 1996. Real hunters were drawn to the challenge after the stigma of unethical methods such as baiting, hounding and trapping was removed, and the wildlife department reached out to them to make participation easier.
Mainers take pride in our hunting heritage, and we should not continue to sully it by accommodating so-called “hunters” from out of state who want an easy way to take home a trophy kill. We should have more respect for our natural resources than to continue these unethical and damaging practices.
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