Hunting Bear in thick country w/o bait

[jm1607]

My buddy and I may try for some public land Black Bear this fall in Arkansas.. We're going to get a scouting trip in a few weeks before.. From what I understand it is pretty thick so besides 1 or 2 small logging areas there won't be much glassing.. Baiting is illegal..

What is the best strategy? Still hunting during the day? I'm thinking look for some good bear sign and setup a little homemade blind or climb up a tree and sit tight during the evening? May try a predator call....

Sound like a good plan? Any thoughts?

 

[Craig Van Arsdale]

Any water in the area? I would find water and put a cam on it and see what kind of activity your getting.

 

[jm1607]

Any water in the area? I would find water and put a cam on it and see what kind of activity your getting.

That's exactly what I was planning on! I guess I should have mentioned that..

There are some rivers/creeks that run through the area, I wanted to walk along them and look for prints.. I was planning on picking up a couple cheaper cameras and leaving them out between scouting and hunting..

I was also going to look for food sources.. The plan is to go scouting about 2 weeks before hunting so if we find some good food sources hopefully it will still be around and the conditions should be about the same..

 

[Bar]

That's pretty much going to be my hunt here in Colorado too. I like hunting up in the high timber. I'll be scouting for huckleberry bushes all summer, and then hope I can still hunt into them during the season, and catch a bear feeding. Probably a long shot, but that's hunting.

 

[Craig Van Arsdale]

Creeks and rivers might me a little harder. If you can find some isolated pond or spring with sone sign on it I personally think your odds go up quite a bit. In a couple areas I hunt that resemble the country your talking about I have had good luck with locating bears on water.

 

[larryschwartz]

If you do decide to do some predator calling be sure to keep your head on a swivel. Black bears will often times come in from behind you as they try to find what is making the sound.

 

[Bar]

I was going to try some calling this year, but all my bear hunting friends told me to not do it alone. Better when two hunters can call back to back to cover all the angles. I'm not good with warnings, and will probably try it alone anyway.

 

[jm1607]

I was going to pick up a foxpro and basically I would control the foxpro/camera/emergency pistol while my buddy got ready with his bow, or vice versa.. Ya, I read that they come in hot sometimes and you never know which direction.. I figure 2 sets of eyes should be ok

I looked over the area pretty well and without scouting, just using google earth/maps, I don't really see any ponds or springs, just creeks...

 

[jm1607]

So...

The area basically looks like horizontal ridges with creeks or rivers in between them, one after another.. The creeks may be partially dry, I won't know till I get my boots on the ground.. It looks like some areas have rather large rivers (compared to the creeks) and some very small creeks.. I wonder which might be more productive? Should I stick to the larger waterways or smaller?

During my limited scouting I was planning on picking a creek, hiking a 4-5 miles down, then coming back either on the ridgeline or the next creek over..

 

[kickemall]

I can't speak for Arkansas but bears are pretty much the same everywhere - find the feed, find the bear. In the fall I suspect that they will be looking for acorns (or mast, whatever they call it there). Bears travel many miles looking for feed and in the fall are generally settling in to something like acorns. You may luck out and cross paths with one traveling and looking but your odds will go up dramatically if you find a solid feed source as it usually will hold numerous bears. I'd try to find someone who lives there and knows a little about the feed or call the wildlife dept. and see what they can tell you about feed sources. I'll say it again, find the feed, find the bear.

 

[Bar]

I know this is for Colorado, but a lot of it should apply everywhere.

http://cpw.state.co.us/thingstodo/Pages/BearHtgTips.aspx

 

[Poser]

I hunted bear in this fashion last season in TN. (Most bear hunters here use dogs). We went into a remote area of a National Forest. In fact, we put in on a river on the NC side and crossed back into TN. The woods were extremely thick. We saw hogs and turkey and a little bit of fresh bear sign, but never saw any bears. It was a tough hunt in steep terrain and frustratingly thick woods.

Finding mast wasn't a problem. It was EVERYWHERE.

 

[jm1607]

Upon further investigating I have found quite a few isolated ponds on Google Map in my hunt Zone/Area.. When I do my scouting trip I'm going to check out as many as I can for Bear sign and make sure they aren't dry..

 

[washingtonalpine]

I hunt bears here in washington mostly up high, but I do hunt some down low in the thick stuff. The biggest key is to find the food source and find sign. When you have recent bear activity and a food source you just have to be persistent to catch one where you can see it. Also get yourself some walker game ears if you don't already have some. Bears are anything but quiet when they are feeding and walking through the thick stuff. Most of the lowland bears I have encountered I heard before I saw

 

[Sooner]

Ill be after them in early Oct across the border in OK. I think I will try to start a mineral site this next week. Do bear come into minerals? We can't bate here either but minerals are ok. Our season only last a month so hopefully I can get on one.

 

[Nalgene]

Results?

 

[jm1607]

Well... we did our best but came up empty handed.. We did have a blast!!

I could write pages on it but I'll try to give the short version.

We hiked in miles to multiple water holes that we prescouted on Google Earth. We couldn't find a track or bear sign of any kind near any of them, so we decided not to sit them. At one we found a ton of bones and kitty prints so we're pretty sure some sort of cat frequented it.

We had a lucky break our 3rd day. It had rained the night before and we pulled over the Jeep to take a leak really early in the morning and saw fresh tracks on the middle of the road. Would never have found them if we didn't randomly stop. That got our hearts racing. The tracks went straight into some really thick stuff though, which was impossible to walk through without making a racket. The tracks did head towards a water source, so we went in in a round about way to check it out and still no prints or signs around the pond. Since that was our first bear sign we decided to sit near the road that evening along the trail the tracks made and had no luck. We knew the odds of that were low though..

The problem we had by now was we couldn't find any other bear sign, not even at the remote ponds where the bears have to drink from?? I mean, it's bear central and there isn't any water for miles.. We sat a couple ponds anyway but didn't have any luck either. We tried the Foxpro around the tracks and a couple other areas. Mainly played the wounded fawn but tried the cub distress once. It felt so wrong listening to a bear cub cry out in distress over and over lol! I couldn't help but laugh the whole time. Did get close to shooting a decent size buck but got busted..

We had to scrap one of our original ideas of looking for hard and soft mast. There were acorns and berries EVERYWHERE! Like you could hardly take a step without stepping on an acorn.. So all our remote white oak groves we were going to hike to seemed pointless..

So we kind of ran out of ideas by day 5-6 and decided to go into town and get some real food at a diner. After talking it over I decided to call this guy who has a lodge and cabins he rents out and has bear hunting over bait on his property. Guy owned the local Harley shop and was cool as hell. I gave him a call and he said everything was booked up. I asked if we could setup a tent in his yard and that we just wanted to kill something and he said to get my ass over there that it's no problem. He literally charged us $50 each a day. He even offered us his shower in his own house among other things. 2 HUGE black bears were killed there that week. One the day before we got there and one 4 days before we got there, both from the same stand (out of his 14 bait stations). So, my buddy sat the same stand and I sat a different stand for 3 days straight until our hunt ended and we didn't see a thing

The good news was we saw tons of wildlife and got some awesome pics. Lots of snakes (with a couple close calls), some newts and salamanders, owls, all sorts of neat stuff. Camped out by this stream with a waterfall that was beautiful. Never ran into another hunter or camper the whole trip. Got a lot of my camping gear figured out since this was my first long backpack hunt, like I learned my Tarptent was too small, that I brought too much food, bacon rocks and cheese sticks suck, my Exo pack rocks, etc.

AND, since we were a little bummed we decided to stop by Shreveport on the way home and stay at a Casino. It was kind of a crap shoot since this could make things better or worse lol! Since it was a Thursday night they gave us a huge suite for something like $50! After gambling till 5am I ended up up $1k which basically paid for the whole trip, so that was a good way to finish things up!! My buddy was up $100 or so, so we were both up when we left. Always a good thing!

So ya, I think it can be done on public land, but I think you need to live in the area and do alot of scouting. Setup some cameras at water holes and keep track of them, etc. We just didn't have the resources to do that, but we did the best we could.. Can't get one if you don't try

Awesome budget trip. 7 hour drive, $300 tag. Can't beat that!

 

[Nalgene]

Thanks for the update. I am hoping to do a similar hunt here in SC next year.

 

[WyoBowhunter21]

I always have luck in the darkest timber. Beaver ponds are key as well. I am allowed to bait but that's where I try to put my baits up. Glad you had a fun trip.

 

[Poser]

I'm going to do a late season bear hunt in East TN this year -last 5 days of the season. Reportedly, it's a bumper mast crop this year and bears aren't having to move much meaning sightings are way down.