Jim/Wa
Active member
"i'm not really a big fan of dogs or bait"
I grew up in PA and probably would have had the same opinion 30 years ago if pressed to give an answer. Back then it was a 3-day free-for-all where you could shoot sows and cubs. The last year I bear hunted in PA, I heard a cub bawling every few minutes off in the distance. As I closed in on the location (an old hemlock tree), another guy was already standing there looking at it. He told me someone had shot the sow earlier and his buddy shot one of the cubs out of the tree shortly after. This guy was debating whether to shoot the now orphaned 25# cub who didn't stand a chance at surviving the winter. I walked off with a bad taste in my mouth to say the least.
Eventually I moved to VA where we had long seasons, lots of bears, and plenty of hound hunters. VA didn't allow killing of sows with cubs and also included a 100# minimum weight. In other words, mature bears only. Hound hunters generally only killed mature males though they treed plenty of females and smaller males. Baiting allows similar discretion.
Not saying one is ethically better than the other necessarily. With bears in all 67 countines and the largest bears in the US, PA's bear management program speaks for itself. Gary Alt's management style -- though extremely successful -- was not meant to maximize hunter opportunities but strictly to manage numbers.
I grew up in PA and probably would have had the same opinion 30 years ago if pressed to give an answer. Back then it was a 3-day free-for-all where you could shoot sows and cubs. The last year I bear hunted in PA, I heard a cub bawling every few minutes off in the distance. As I closed in on the location (an old hemlock tree), another guy was already standing there looking at it. He told me someone had shot the sow earlier and his buddy shot one of the cubs out of the tree shortly after. This guy was debating whether to shoot the now orphaned 25# cub who didn't stand a chance at surviving the winter. I walked off with a bad taste in my mouth to say the least.
Eventually I moved to VA where we had long seasons, lots of bears, and plenty of hound hunters. VA didn't allow killing of sows with cubs and also included a 100# minimum weight. In other words, mature bears only. Hound hunters generally only killed mature males though they treed plenty of females and smaller males. Baiting allows similar discretion.
Not saying one is ethically better than the other necessarily. With bears in all 67 countines and the largest bears in the US, PA's bear management program speaks for itself. Gary Alt's management style -- though extremely successful -- was not meant to maximize hunter opportunities but strictly to manage numbers.
