Hunt Bears With Doughnuts, Pizza?

Opponents liken bear baiting - which involves leaving anything from doughnuts to pizza out while hunters lie in wait - to assassination. Defenders argue it's needed to control the bear population.

Congress will be asked again next year to decide if the practice, which is the most common way to hunt bears in states that allow it, should continue to be allowed on federal lands. But a similar effort last year didn't even make it past a House subcommittee, failing on a 38-25 vote.

Rep. Jim Moran, a Virginia Democrat who represents the suburbs south of Washington, is not giving up.

"This is just wrong," said Moran, who plans to again introduce legislation to ban bear baiting next year. "It's comparable to shooting fish in a barrel. I just don't know what kind of sport that is."

Because federal officials defer to states on wildlife management, bear baiting is allowed in federal parks in the nine states where it's legal - Maine, New Hampshire, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho and Alaska.

In Minnesota, Gov. Jesse Ventura, who once declared, "Until you've hunted man, you haven't hunted yet," is a vocal bear-baiting critic.

"Going out there and putting jelly doughnuts down and Yogi comes up and sits there and thinks he's found the mother lode five days in a row - and then you back-shoot him from a tree?" the former professional wrestler said in a recent interview.

"That ain't sport - that's an assassination."

But Karen Noyce, a bear researcher with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, said baiting helps keep the bear population in check, at just over 20,000 in the state. That has minimized nuisance problems with bears getting into neighborhoods and rummaging through people's garbage, she said.

Noyce also argued that hunting bears without bait in the state's woody terrain would be difficult.

"You don't normally see bears unless they're at a place where they are feeding," she said.

Wayne Pacelle, a vice president and lobbyist with the Humane Society, which supports Moran's proposed legislation, discounted that argument.

"They have thick forests and lush vegetation in Washington and Oregon and other states that have long banned bear baiting," he said.

Washington state banned bear baiting and hunting with dogs in 1996. The number of bears killed in the state by hunters has actually increased since then - from 844 in 1997 to 1,439 last year.

George Tsukamoto, a biologist with the state's Department of Fish and Wildlife, credited the increase to lengthening the bear hunting season and cutting the price of hunting permits. Most of the bears killed have been in the densely forested western part of the state, he added.

Three other states banned bear baiting in the past decade - Massachusetts in 1996, Oregon in 1994 and Colorado in 1992. Michigan voters rejected a proposed bear baiting ban in 1996.

A ban on federal lands would have a significant impact. In Wisconsin, for example, the federal government is the second largest landowner in the state.

Rick Posig, president of the Wisconsin Bear Hunters Association, said bear baiting isn't as easy as critics make it out to be.

"You can sit on a bait for hours on end," he said.

Posig also argued that baiting makes the bear population stronger, by providing enough food for the surviving bears to have more cubs in the spring.

Ironically, the Humane Society makes the same point.

"By putting tens of thousands of pounds of food in the woods, you contribute to population," Pacelle said, "which runs against the idea that bear baiting somehow meets some management imperative."

Pacelle also said it is inconsistent for the U.S. Forest Service and federal agencies to warn people against feeding animals, but allow hunters to put out food for bears.

"There is some truth to that," conceded Noyce, the Minnesota state bear researcher. "I won't say baiting doesn't contribute to bears habituating to human scent. I'm sure it does."

The Forest Service is staying out of the bear baiting fray, but it has gotten involved in hunting disputes in the past. In 1990, the Forest Service banned the use of salt to lure elk from wilderness areas.