If you are going to be hunting for bear and want a quality thick hide for your rug from a dominant boar, then you are looking at late spring. I tag my finest boars over memorial day weekend. The sows come into heat in early June. Boars start lingering around my baits in mid May. Sows are what is driving them, and tons of food too. My best advise, if your season allows it, is to open your bait(s) up in May. Keep over filling them with proteins: cheap dry dog foods, oats from feed mill, raw breads, and lots of fryer oil. I would buy the five gallon raw feed molasses for horses from a tack supplier. Pour a jar out on every tree. The smell of the molasses and the fryer oil will hang for a long time. I mix anise and the fryer oils. Toss onto trees with a heavy canopy. Lasts a long time from rains and snows coming down.
What I do that works the best is to get the baits open early as possible and keep filling them. Don't hunt them until the last week of May. Two weeks before that, I add a sow in heat gel to the trees and the bait barrel. Boars will stop buy to feed and just to scent check what is coming and going. True monster boars here in Idaho don't ever come into a bait in day light and have to be tricked. It will be either an early morning hunt, like 0500 or earlier, or just at dusk. I put the gels out when I start to hunt. A lot of mature boars will be hanging around down wind, so make sure you place your stand correctly. If you are bow hunting, minimum of twenty feet up at 20 to 25 yards out. These cagey old boars are not dumb. They have been to baits in your area for over 10 to 15 years and survived. Your best bet to get them to show themselves is to manage your scent to zero and add that sow in heat gel when you hunt.
Typical best case scenario. No rain or snow. Late May. I got no less than three sets of sows and cubs returning to my baits on a regular ridge line over a water way below. Most bears travel over ridge lines and water corridors. Scent goes down hill to heavier air in water ways, hangs around and then they start coming up to see what's there. You get them to come in and you keep them around long enough for that sow stink to work. Boars are hard to hunt. They come into your baits slow. Listen for squirrels. They will tell you where and when a bear is in the area. The will always come from down wind to you. So bring a windicator with you every time you set up your stand and every time you hunt.
You should set your stand off from the bait to have the best scent break up and provide you with the best shot. I go for the double lung with my bow. Rifle or shotgun? I bust them through both shoulders.
In spring use proteins. Bears are looking and driven for proteins. In the fall use sweets. They are looking for dead calories and pure white sugar sacks on bread with oils dumped on them are the cheapest way to go.
Bait'em 901 in Alaska makes the best sow in heat lures. Buy them now. They are selling out fast. If you cannot get a lure gel, go and order a scent ball with sow in heat. Learn to hang this from a cable about eight feet off the ground between two trees. It's the second best.
You want the gel to tell the Boars that it's time to slip up. I have found this to be the best way to draw them into the open in shooting light.
Anise and or vanilla can be found at any dollar store for a buck. I buy twenty bottles at a time. I pour one whole bottle into a five gallon jug of fryer oil and shake it up. Pour oil all over the bait station, ground for scent paw carry, trees to keep the stink in the air.
90% of baiting success is getting a great stink line that stays put for the longest time. Then changing it up when you hunt.
Idaho_Hunter out.
