The author took this black bear on a south-facing slope following a spring snow storm. Bears and bear sign become more obvious following a spring snow.

Without doubt, baiting black bears to a food source is one of the most reliable ways to kill a bruin. Sit over a bait station long enough, with bears working the area, and the odds are very good that an opportunistic blackie will wander in to see what’s cooking. Bears can be baited at any time they’re awake, but they’re especially vulnerable to the prospects of an easy meal in the spring. Having passed the months of winter with nothing for sustenance but their own body fat, it doesn’t take bruins long to work up a keen appetite once they come yawning from their dens.

Baiting comes with a number of advantages. Predictability is one. With a station to watch, you know when and where to hunt. If your sentiments favor technology, you might also gain a pretty good idea of when the bear will be there via the use of a trusty trail camera. There is, however, another way to hunt bears, a method that doesn’t involve bait, or hounds, for that matter, either. It’s the way you must hunt if you visit my stomping grounds in Montana or many other western states, as baiting or running bears with dogs aren’t allowed. It’s very similar to the way that many folks hunt elk or mule deer: Spend copious hours glued to the best optics you can buy. Attend carefully to tracks, scat and other sign that a bear may be in the area. Hike the backcountry. In other words, take the challenge of the no-bait bear.

For the record, I have no ethical scruples against hunting bears with bait. I just prefer many aspects of the no-bait method, some of which have nothing to do with killing a bear. The physical challenge is one piece of it. I’ve hiked for miles in search of bears and their sign, at elevations much higher than the fitness center where I exercise near home. That’s good for the body. I’ve also witnessed many small miracles of nature that I wouldn’t have seen otherwise. On one spring hunt, I encountered a very odd-looking cow elk with sleek summer hair on her back and a mass of matted winter coat dangling like a woolly blanket from her belly. On another, I marveled at the bright yellow blossoms of balsamroot poking stoically through a soggy coverlet of new spring snow. These experiences lend health to the soul.

Of course, the supreme object of a no-bait hunt is to bring home a black bear, and for that you need something more than a good set of hiking legs and a cultivated appreciation for the beauty of the natural world flush with the bold optimism of spring. Consistently successful no-bait hunters tend to be masters of their art; methodical, observant folk who know where bruins prefer to live and what they like to eat; because although they don’t rely on bait per se, masters of the no-bait method know that to routinely find bears in spring or fall, you need to hunt where they feed.

Though my father wasn’t a bear hunter, as a young adult I happened into the company of a druid of the bruin game. Bruce wasn’t the type you’d immediately associate with bear hunting. A warm, kind man who shepherded the flock at a Baptist church in Superior, Montana, he was clean-shaven and smartly dressed. His parishioners had more the look of bear hunters--hulking, bearded fellows who felled timber on canted slopes above Fish Creek or transformed unwieldy pine logs into sweet-smelling stacks of pale framing lumber at the now defunct mill east of town.