RUMFORD – The season for hunting Maine bear with bait begins Monday, but if referendum advocates have their way, it will be the last time.

When bear hunters and guides who use bait or hounds talk about the November referendum, to ban three forms of bear hunting, their gloom is evident.

They fear the end is near.

Still, they went about their business on July 31, Maine’s date for baiting to begin.

The process begins even earlier. Hunters and guides who don’t hunt their own land must make deals with landowners.

Guides Ed McPherson of Rumford Point and Milan Gammon of Rumford Center get verbal agreements where they hunt from property owners.

They offer bear hunting with hounds, running the dogs off 15 bait sites between Rumford, Andover and Canton. “Legally, as long as there’s no tree stand, you don’t need permission,” McPherson said.

Individual hunters, like George Cayer of Rumford and Tim Gallant of Mexico, hunt bear over bait from atop such a platform.

A tree stand is a 12-foot-high metal structure chained or tied to a tree. It gives hunters a platform and seat from which they await hungry bears.

Each year, Gallant said he leases 640 acres of Meadwestvaco land in Roxbury and Andover from Wagner Forest Management of Lyme, N.H. Both Gallant and Cayer photograph, videotape and hunt bears.

Guides Wayne and Barbara Plummer, former Durham residents, own and operate Northern Pride Lodge in Kokadjo. They spend about $1,500 a year to lease land for 30 bait sites, which enables an annual average of 25 clients to hunt bear from stands during the three-week season.

Bring on the carbs!

Low-carb foods just won’t do for Maine bears. They need to build up fat reserves to tide them over during winter hibernation. Berries and nuts in the wild are the mainstay.

But bears aren’t picky. They’ll eat any type of food.

“Bears are just walking, eating machines,” McPherson said.

He and Gammon use doughnuts exclusively at their 15 bait sites; hounds are used to track and tree bears from the site.

Luring a bear to bait sites allows hunters to assess the size, sex and quality of the animal, as well as whether it has cubs.

Last year McPherson’s and Gammon’s dogs treed 42 bear, but clients shot only four.

“We saw a lot of sows with cubs,” McPherson said. They don’t allow their clients to shoot sows with cubs or the cubs themselves.

McPherson and Gammon buy their bait in 55-gallon-drum quantities from Dunkin’ Donuts in Berlin, N.H., for $35 a barrel. Last year, McPherson said they used 34 barrels.

But they only dole it out in 5-gallon containers until bears start taking the bait. They check their sites every other day.

If bears are hitting the site, McPherson said, they switch to 10-gallon pails, placing the aromatic goodies in metal or plastic barrels that either sit on the ground or hang just above the ground from tree trunks.

Grease and Jell-O

Cayer and Gallant rely on a combination of outdated hot fudge and marshmallow ice cream sundae toppings, pastries and Jell-O.

Gallant said he pays from $3 to $5 a bucket for outdated plastic pails of sundae toppings.

On July 31, Cayer and Gallant and helpers Shauna Korn, 16, of Oxford, her dad, Joe Korn, and Dustin Arsenault, 17, of Mexico, lined bait barrels with the ooey, gooey toppings.

A few black plastic garbage bags of muffins and pastry crumbs were then dumped inside each barrel.

But the secret ingredient was Jell-O powder, which was dusted over fryer grease on the ground near the bait barrels.

“Oh, boy! That smells good!” Gallant said at one site in Roxbury.

The grease and Jell-O powder, Gallant said, stick to the bottom of bear paws. It then gets tracked into the woods when the bears leave, creating enticing trails for other bears to follow.

He also uses a short plastic pipe containing anise oil, a bear attractant, hanging it near bait barrels, which they check daily and refill as needed.

The Plummers buy 300-pound barrels of pastries. Carrying the barrels in the back of a truck, they dole it out in four 5-gallon buckets per bait site, placing the sweets in ground cribs made from dead limbs and downed trees.

Barbara Plummer said they check the sites every other day, depending on the weather.

Pastries, the most prominent type of bait used in the state, are usually combined with any of the following: meat scraps, molasses, beaver carcasses, used fryer grease, table scraps, fish, honey, grains, fruits, candy, french fries and breads.

Essentially, any high-calorie or high-protein food that can be bought cheaply, in large quantities, will work as bear bait.