November 7, 2004

• I stand corrected.

  Bear baiting more humane than long shots
  CRAIG MEDRED OUTDOORS
  (Published: November 7, 2004) On Wednesday, I woke up feeling sorry for
  many of the Alaskans who voted in favor of a failed state initiative to
  ban bear baiting.

  Nearly every supporter of the ban I talked
  with before the election thought he or she was voting to do something
  to help black bears. Maybe those voters will feel better today knowing
  that belief was misguided.
   
  It is unlikely a ban on bear
  baiting would have caused the state’s annual black bear kill to drop by
  a single animal. More likely is that a baiting ban would have ensured
  additional bears died unpleasant deaths.

  How can that be?

  The answer rests in the way bears are hunted here. A few are shot over
  bait. Still more are shot along salmon streams, which is basically a
  natural form of baiting.

  And a big number are shot in the
  mountains in the spring, when they are out foraging for the first
  greens of spring, or in the fall, when they are after the last berries
  of the year.

  Hunting bears on the alpine tundra is
  difficult. Bears are usually hard to stalk. As a result, some hunters
  take long shots at these bears. Long shots maximize the chances of a
  wounding an animal.

  The farther you are from your target, the less likely you are to hit it.

  Gravity pulls a bullet down as it flies. Winds deflect a bullet as it
  moves through the air. Distance magnifies any problem with your aim.

  For instance, if you twitch when you pull the trigger and jerk a shot
  to the right, it might be off by an inch at 25 yards. That will grow to
  four inches at 100 yards, eight inches at 200 yards, and so on.

  That’s why, when shooting at long distances, it is a lot easier to miss
  a bear’s vital area than hit it. If this meant the hunter also missed
  the bear, that would be fine. Usually, it means the bullet hits the
  bear in a nonvital area.

  Given that bullets also lose energy
  as they travel over distance, what you end up with is a bullet more
  likely to tear up a lot of flesh than to kill. The result: a wounded
  bear.

  Some wounded bears are tracked down and killed. Others crawl off into the woods to die.

   No one can say how many bears might have suffered this sort of death if baiting had been banned.

  And no one knows how many of the people who practice bear baiting might
  have shifted to hunting bears other ways. No doubt some would have, and
  all of those ways have their downsides.

  I’m no big fan of bear baiting. I don’t do it. I have no desire to do it. I don’t even think it’s particularly fair.

  But nature isn’t fair, either. Fairness is a human idea, separating the
  civilized world from the natural world. The natural world doesn’t
  operate on fairness, it operates on luck.

  If an animal is lucky, it survives. If not, well …

  Consider the moose calf who’s enjoying its new life until stumbling
  into the path of a hungry grizzly bear and getting killed. That’s
  nature.
  …

  A bait station doesn’t encourage a bear to go to town looking for food;
  it encourages the animal to hang around the bait station in the same
  way garbage encourages a bear to hang around a neighborhood.

  In either case, the problem isn’t what the bear is eating, it’s where the bear is living.

  So if you really want to do something for bears, start at home by
  dealing with your own baiting. Take care of your garbage. Don’t give a
  bear a reason to hang around the city, because that’s the kind of
  conditioning that does get bears into trouble — not bear baiting.

  I cut out the middle.  You can find it here:
  Anchorage Daily News | Bear baiting more humane than long shots
  
  

  • 7:35 pm
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