About the time you begin protecting your garden tomatoes from the first frost in a few months, there will be something else stirring in the air besides the smell of autumn.

The din of politics.

Aspirants for public office will make promises that most will never keep. State government will ask you to vote in yet another bond issue, and the presidential hopefuls will monopolize most of the commercial breaks on television. The political landscape will look a little different this fall, though. Voters will be asked to do something rarely called for at the Maine ballot box: approve or disapprove Maine’s traditional bear hunt using bait or hounds.

With one check mark on a ballot, Mainers – hunters and non-hunters alike – will decide the fate of a way of life. The stakes are high.

The anti-hunting organizations will rely on an emotional appeal and an uninformed, gullible electorate. These nationally funded anti-hunting lobbies will portray a Disney World image of a poor, cuddly black bear being lured with the same sweet pastries that beckon our own sweet tooth.

The other side, those of us who want to protect Maine’s traditional bear hunt, will focus on three main themes:

• The economic value of bear hunting to rural Maine;

• The audacity of Big City animal rights groups telling us how to live our lives and manage our wildlife;

• The expected increase in nuisance bears – the danger factor.

The Hunters For Fair Bear Hunting, a pro-referendum organization, has already pooh poohed the third theme, the nuisance factor, in a letter writing campaign to Maine newspapers. Those of us who believe that an increased bear population will result in a corresponding increase in nuisance bear complaints have never painted a picture of snarling bears descending on Mainers en masse.

But we do know from Maine’s bear bounty days, before bears were hunted for sport, and from what has happened in neighboring Massachusetts, that an unchecked Maine bear population during certain times of the year and under certain natural conditions will spell trouble for tourism, agriculture and public safety.

A bear is an omnivore, an opportunistic predator that, when hungry enough, will forage at will and with little wariness of humans once it becomes acclimated. If you question this, look at the record. This spring in Atkinson a bear attacked and devoured a 40-pound pig that was housed in a pen beside the family home of Greg Johnson. Johnson scared the bear off with a shotgun. While he was inside the bear returned and carried off the squealing pig. The same week Bridgton school officials were forced to keep school kids inside at recess out of concern for two bears that were seen marauding neighborhood bird feeders and garbage cans.

In South Portland a week later, police officials were forced to dispatch a 278 -pound bear that was running through neighborhoods near a school complex and spreading panic. In a press release, the Maine Fish and Wildlife Department said, “Hopefully people in southern Maine will now begin to understand that there certainly are bears in Cumberland and York Counties, and these types of nuisance calls will increase if this referendum passes. The South Portland incident also speaks to the fact that Maine does not have the resources to respond to an increase in calls. Wardens could not get to the South Portland area in time before local police decided the bear caused a threat to the public.”

Fish and Wildlife spokesman Mark Latti also said that a nuisance bear made a dinner call uninvited at a Saco River campground. The bear cleaned out the campers’ cooler and sent the campers to higher ground. Fish and Wildlife officials have also handled complaints about bears killing sheep and chickens in the Parsonfield area.

Maine is proud of its healthy black bear population, which got that way through sound wildlife management. Hunting bear over bait is and has been an integral part of this successful bear management program. Biologists estimate that if this fall’s bear referendum passes and bear baiting is banned, Maine’s existing bear population of 23,000 will double within five years.

Once Maine’s black bear population is no longer manageable and bear numbers exceed the carrying capacity of their wild habitat, they become prone to disease, malnutrition and opportunistic forays into places where human beings raise livestock and make their homes.

These points are historically documented facts, not campaign hyperbole. Sportsmen who want to save Maine’s hunting heritage this fall need to talk to friends and neighbors who may not fully appreciate or understand nature’s cycle or the black bear as a predator.

V. Paul Reynolds is editor of the Northwoods Sporting Journal. He is also a Maine Guide, co-host of a weekly radio program “Maine Outdoors” heard Sundays at 7 p.m. on The Voice of Maine News-Talk Network (WVOM-FM 103.9, WCME-FM 96.7) and former information officer for the Maine Dept. of Fish and Wildlife. His e-mail address is [email protected].