Time to stop baiting bears for kill with food for humans

To The Daily Sun,

I read with interest the AP article in Jan. 3’s Daily Sun on bear-human conflicts. This was only half the story. The hidden truth is that New Hampshire Fish and Game is complicit in increasing the incidents of bear-human conflicts by promoting baiting of bears. Yes, that is correct. Most bears in New Hampshire are shot over bait. In 2018, 57 percent of the 1,033 bears shot in New Hampshire were shot over bait.

What does this mean? People who hunt over baits, as opposed to bear hunters, set up a baiting site to attract bears to feed on human food. Hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds of human foods (old pizza, sweetened granola and other garbage) are used throughout New Hampshire over the month-long baiting season. Bears are eventually lured in to this bait and begin visiting bait sites. During hunting season, bait shooters sit in a blind near the bait and shoot the bear when it comes to feed. No real hunting involved. Many have compared it to shooting ducks in a barrel. 

The first problem is that the bears come to associate the bait food with the smells of humans and even livestock. They then become habituated to human foods and become less shy and more unpredictable, changing their eating habits, home ranges and movement patterns in ways that at times result in bear-human conflict. The second problem is that cubs are left orphaned when their mother is shot over bait because the people who shoot over bait have not learned the bear’s habits and don’t know whether those feeding on bait have cubs or not. These orphaned cubs either die of starvation, are killed on our highways or may seek food near human habitation. As a result, bear-human conflicts with both adult bears and orphaned cubs increase.

N.H. Fish & Game would like you to believe that they need to allow baiting to "manage" our bear population, yet 18 of the 28 states that allow bear hunting make baiting illegal and manage their populations just as or even more effectively. N.H. Fish and Game should take a page out of their playbooks and learn to "manage" our bear population without baiting.

Weldon Bosworth

Gilford