ihookem wrote:I hunted 3 days on opening weekend and then hunted the last weekend for Wisconsin bear with bait. I saw 1 bear for a few seconds other than that we didnt see a bear . I went to bait on Labor Day weekend and came back Tuesday and there was nothing left of the bait. Tuesday we rebaited . Everything looked really good. We come to hunt on opening day ( Wednesday) and the bait was not touched. I was really puzzled. We only saw a deer opening day, and a darn big one too . The second day we didnt hunt due to wind , heat and the wind direction was not in our favor . We decided to not burn the stand out just to sit one day but we did go in to rebait, just to find it now did not get hit for 2 days. We hunted 3rd day, ( Friday) in the pouring rain. We did see a bear for just a few seconds. It was a very big bear and it was tall. It never came in. We decide to leave an hour and a half before closing cause the weather was only getting worse and raining harder all the time. We were soaked right through our rain gear. by 5;45pm. The next day was much better for wind direction and weather. We hunted again ( Saturday) and the bait got hit over night to find a bear came in @ 5 AM. My son and I decided we did the right thing by leaving. We did not want to have to look for blood in the pouring rain. On Saturday we hunted till dark and didnt see anything at all. We decide to go home and give the stand a rest. I cam back 11 day later to find the bait all gone and bear activity seemed pretty good. I rebaited on Thursday morning and thought I would do well. The bait did not get touched as of Saturday afternoon. I decided to call it off and not hunt Sunday at all. I figure if they were not hitting at night, they likely would not come in the daytime. My season ends tomorrow and I am done . It was the worst bear hunt our camp ever had. We always saw at least a bear the 1st few days except one time and that was 1995 when I hunted 5 days before seeing the 1st bear. It seemed if it could go wrong, it did. About 10 minutes before we saw a glimps of the bear , a big tree fell and crashed right behind us. I was grateful it did not hit us cause we could have been killed very easily. I am somewhat sure this is why the bear paced back and forth 10 min. after the tree crashed. Nothing went right on this hunt. One hunt , I looked at my bolt action to find the bolt half opened. The last day , 1 hr before close I remembered I forgot to put a round in the chamber. The day we decided not to hunt , ( the second day) We went fishing . We come back to camp and my son decided to check the trail cam in the yard . We look through to find a nice bear on the cam while we were fishing. We walked all over that yard back and forth to the river . We think it may have come around cause we grill steaks a lot, and my son caught an 18 3/4 " smallmouth and we kept it. He tossed it in the woods about 30 yds from the trail cam. It is very strange that a bear would come in the yard with all our scent at 10:40 AM to boot. Very strange bear hunt. It is sad that I am 59 now and may very well be my last bear hunt in Wisconsin. My son gets a tag next year if he wants to . I did catch a 39" musky while jigging for smallmouth however, and my son caught is biggest smallmouth . We did catch quite a few smallmouth in the river though. I still think this stand is a very good spot, however, as we all know, you can think you have the best spot in the area and it just does not pan out. I did have more bear activity I ever had though.
You could look at unit C or E to get tags more often so you can still hunt bears. For me its fun to get out of the box and hunt new areas. Others like the idea of the same camp. But 9 or more years is a long time to wait. Im in C this year and I can still hunt. I may hunt tomorrow or Friday.