>In alot of areas unless you
>could use bait it would
>be dang near impossible to
>kill a bear without dogs.
> None of the bears
>we chased this year on
>my hunt would even tree.
>I killed mine on the
>ground ahead of the dogs.
>
Do all you can to keep it. Once it is gone you will not get it back. Look at Colorado for example. We have no bait, we have no dogs and typically the DOW kills more problem bears a year than all hunting methods combined. There are several advantages to hunting with digs. No accidental kills, you can select exactly what you want, the animals are still afraid of people.
By far an large the primary contributor to out bear problems is directly related with not being able to hunt with dogs. When I was a kid, we had exactly 1 bear get into our cabin in 8 years that we owned it. That bear was ran with dogs, treed, let down, ran again etc. In the next 8 years after the 1996 ban they killed 9 "problem"/3rd strike bears at our cabin. Nothing changed except that we could no longer use dogs to create a fear of humans.
It used to be a bear would run in the other direction at the sound of a dog, instead now it figures a dog = dog food and garbage, etc.
Also I believe that unlike the majority of hunting we do, the thrill of hunting over dogs is very little about the kill. Instead the true pleasure is watching the dogs work as a team, the pursuit capture etc. Much like bird dog hunting. Most serious bird hunters are not so much set on the pheasant, but more about the pride, time effort of taking a pup from playing with wings to holding point, flushing on command and retrieving. For me this is why we need to keep this hunting form alive. It is a form of hunting that has been with man through out time and should continue to be part of hunting. Ban hunting with dogs and you will see a huge increase in problem bears.
