One of the proposals that wildlife is floating at this years meetings is rules around clarifying the bear baiting issue. This is the pamphlet that wildlife is passing out at the public meetings you may want to read it to fully understand my comments on the subject.
Bear baiting is and will remain illegal but by attempting to better define the definitions around baiting I think they are opening up a big can of worms.
Because baits are legal for deer and people do put baits out for bear as well an exclusionary zone will be established around bait sites. You can not kill a bear inside that bait zone unless you’re a dog hunter and the chase begins outside the exclusionary zone which is 100 yard zone for unprocessed foods like grains and fruit and 300 yards for processed foods and sugars.
My reading of the rules if they are passed as proposed will make a warden’s job nearly impossible. How unless he witnesses the entire hunt will he know where the hunt began and whether or not a dead bear inside the exclusionary zone was killed legally? Is he going to carry a quart jar to measure the amount of grain at the site? It also sounds like if someone really wanted to they could easily get around the exclusionary zone by baiting in an area where they have a clear field of view that exceeds the 100 yard exclusionary zone.
There was minimal debait about this issue at the district 5 meeting but in the mountains where there is a lot more bear hunters the Asheville Times reports “strong opposition” to the proposal.
Either make baiting legal all totally outlaw it, these proposals will be impossible to enforce.
