Bear hunting in Maine has regressed into a largely closed, almost fraternal network of nonresident hunters and specialized resident guides who practice the effective but unsporting and cruel methods of baiting, hounding and trapping. This system is sanctioned, promulgated and promoted by the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife under the false guise of protecting the public from being overrun by dangerous bears.
The upshot of this program is Maine forest lands laced with millions of pounds of rotting doughnuts, pizza and similar garbage used to addict the bears and lure them to the hunters’ blinds. Others are chased to exhaustion by fresh packs of GPS-monitored dogs until they can run no more and must stop to face the hounds or run up a tree. Ultimately, the bear is shot out of the tree to fall mortally wounded among the pack of waiting dogs. Worse yet, we have bears crazed with terror, held for hours by painful snares until finally dispatched by the trapper or guide and sport making the rounds. The result of this management program is a bear population that by the DIF&W’s own figures has risen 250 percent since these methods first become popular in the 1970s.
From personal experience, I know Maine has its share of resourceful and dedicated biologists. Game wardens are hard working, and I’ve never met one I didn’t like. But as agents of a department whose policies can be guided by cronyism and politics as much as anything else, they are compelled to endorse and defend even the worst policies. How else can you explain the contradictory positions the department assumes regarding feeding wildlife around the homestead and the practice of dumping millions of tons of sugary, fatty garbage in the woods to bait bear?
You are admonished not to put out even a few scraps of food for a fox or raccoon or pellets for starving deer because it is unhealthy for the animals and disposes them to expect and seek out human food. Yet at the same time, DIF&W assures us that the mountains of garbage set out for bear baiting is not harmful for the bears and other wildlife that visit the sites. And since this is generally done far from human habitation, they won’t carry this behavior into our towns, farms and villages. If this is the case, what danger do these bears present in the first place? Why not leave them alone? Don’t feed the bears, and their numbers will decrease naturally.
What is even more disappointing is the department’s use of scare tactics in the media campaign that has been launched against the ban, using uniformed personnel in slick ads to influence the outcome of a people’s referendum.
Any large animal should be respected and can become dangerous in certain situations. But black bears, which inhabit a wide range in the lower 48 states, are a notoriously timid species, and, although there are tens of thousands of human-black bear encounters every year nationally, serious injuries resulting from these incidents are remarkably rare. When they do occur it is usually the result of a foolhardy lapse on the part of the human. The department’s job should be to educate the public on how best to coexist with bears.
By DIF&W’s own statistics, most of Maine’s bears live and are killed far from population centers. The majority of the 3,000 or so bears taken in a typical year are in wildlife management zones that are dominated by unorganized townships and plantations. What danger to people can bears in these regions pose? And even if passed, the ban would not restrict the department’s ability to deal with problem or nuisance bears by all the existing methods.
Hunting bears in Maine by baiting and hounding is not a long-standing Maine tradition and was practically unknown here before the mid-1970s when it was imported from the south as a nearly sure way to provide a bear without the sport having to expend much energy. And, unlike Maine’s deer and moose harvests in which the large majority of successful hunters are Maine residents, nearly two-thirds of the successful bear hunters using these methods are nonresidents.
Hunting from GPS-equipped vehicles using radio-collared dogs to chase and tree bears is not fair chase, and it is cruel to the bears and often the dogs as well. True sportsmen don’t crouch in a blind and shoot bears as they feed on spoiled doughnuts and pizza. And bear trapping serves no good purpose whatsoever and should have been outlawed in Maine years ago as it has been in the rest of the country.
A “yes” vote on Question 1 on Nov. 4 will stop these practices and give both bears and fair chase hunters the respect they deserve.
Jerry Stelmok of Atkinson is an outdoorsman who has fished and canoed in Maine for over 50 years.