Feeding the Bears

So you want to know what bears eat? Here in Manitoba we mostly hunt black bear from baited stands.
 
 

Baiting can be quite an effort, especially when you are an outfitter and have a couple dozen baits to keep going.
 
 
These two have quite the fight over our barrel of yum
 
 
 
 
 
We've been doing this for quite some time now, and after some trial and error have found that bears prefer raspberry flavoured Jello. We used to use a variety of flavours but found that the raspberry flavoured baits were the hardest hit.
 
 
 
Of course, we don't only feed them Jello.We mix it with lots of yummy things like grain, old bread and cake, used fryer oil, and toss in some animal carcasses that our local trappers are more than happy to stuff in our freezer. Well, freezers, we have more than a few, and when they empty of carcasses they fill with our hunters' trophies.
 
 
Sounds easy, doesn't it? Don't forget the volumes we are talking about. A truck load of bread, a trailer full of grain, all the used fryer oil our 3 local restaurants can produce in a year.

Mixing bait is a big job, and how all three of our children first entered the workforce; mixing dozens of 5 gallon buckets of bait after school. The kids grew and moved on to "real jobs" and these days, we mix with a cement mixer yet it still is a huge job.

Do you run baits? What do you use? I'm always on the look out for new ideas, as you can see in an earlier post where I am trying suckers, or as I started calling them; bear Jello shooters.