How do bears find your baits? This is a subject that has been debated by bear hunters for many decades and several common themes keep coming up. When I first started bear hunting, the high-quality scents and sprays that are available these days were not around, and the big “secret” was to use fryer oil—and lots of it. Or maybe some anise on a rag, that kind of thing. Primitive stuff by today’s standards.  

Two things are apparent when using bait in bear hunting. 1) We need a bear to find our bait 2) After that, more bears will find it. Getting that first bear is the key to getting several bears. Each year, I use a mixture of fryer oil and Northwoods Gold Rush to start out all of my baits. I spray the oil all around the bait site, on the ground and in the trees with a big squirter some people call a super soaker. It’s the most effective way to “spread the word”, and I have great confidence in this method for bringing in the first bear in a hurry. 

However, things are more complex when it comes to explaining how bears find a bait site, new or old. I have become convinced that the use of fryer oil is effective, but it is secondary to the use of good scents and lures. Yet there is even more to it than that. I believe black bears communicate with scent in both intentional and unintentional ways, and these ways affect how, when, and why they find new bait sites. 

Intentional ways bears communicate are things like dropping scat in trails, rubbing their backs on trees, biting trees, pulling down small trees, and walking down small trees. I think they use urine as well, but it’s difficult to see and quantify that. The unintentional ways have not been studied or discussed as much. These include pheromones, dander, scent glands, saliva, oils, and secretions. You could also put scat and urine into this category. 

It’s important to mention that, even with a quality bait set up and bears using these forms of communication with each other, it’s very common with new bait sites, even those in great locations, for it to take a few days for them to find your bait. In extreme cases, I have had bait sites that looked like they were in a terrific location, but no bears found them for several days up to a week. It’s complex and sometimes very time-consuming for all of these factors to come together. 

When it comes to understanding forms of unintentional communication and how they help bears find quality food sources, I want to tell you a story. I have found that when you use the same good bait sites year after year, bears find them quickly, and bears often start to show up on camera within hours. But those new baits that sit idle day after day can be very perplexing, until one bear shows up. Last August I had a bait that sat with a Moultrie Mobile cell camera on it for eight days with nothing to trigger the camera but a few raccoons and a fisher. Then, a yearling bear found the bait the evening of day eight. On day nine, a sow with three cubs showed up on camera, then within 12 hours a mature boar was at the bait. Long story short, the bait sat idle for eight days, and then within two days, there were seven bears hitting the bait hard. They cleaned out the 40-gallon barrel within 48 hours.  

These experiences have taught me this issue has to be way more complicated than just bears walking around with a little oil on their feet. I’m convinced that bears are finding the newer baits with intentional communication and a lot of unintentional communication. Black bears are hyper aware of everything going on around them. This awareness includes a lot of information being taken in by sights, sounds, and especially smells; they know all the other bears in the area, what every bear smells like, and where they spend most of their time. Certainly, they can smell a pile of scat and realize when the bear who left that scat is eating a lot better than they are. Same goes for rubbing trees, urine, and leftover saliva full of berry bushes, acorns, or whatever else bears happen to be feeding on at the time, as well as dander (dropped skin cells), pheromones, glands, and bodily secretions. Any bear who crosses the scent stream of a bear upwind of him takes in a lot of information about that bear. 

I’m also convinced that bears who are stressed give off a completely different scent signature than bears who are healthy, eating well, and putting on the fat they need for the winter. When struggling bears experience healthy bears, their hyperawareness and all the sensory input they are getting makes it easy for them to realize when there are better resources available to them than what they are currently using. Bears who are eating well are like magnets for other bears. Healthy, fat bears just smell different and the other bears are highly attracted to their situation. They actively seek out more information about where these bears are getting quality food, which in turn leads them right to your bait (as long as you have a quality bait set up). And that, in a nutshell, is why a bait goes from one bear to seven bears in less than two days.  

All of this is speculation on my part. I have no science to back it up. But, I have a huge well of experience and anecdotal evidence that has convinced me of this concept, which is why I feel confident passing it along to you. I’m sure this is something I will be developing over time and looking for more information that will either strengthen or weaken my theories. If you have input, please feel free to email me at berniebarringer@gmail.com.