ANDOVER – Hound hunting guide Ed McPherson of Rumford Point worries daily about November’s bear referendum.

He and business partner Milan Gammon of Rumford Center own and operate Bear Meadow Guide Service.

McPherson is a logger who supplements his income and hound-raising hobby with the fall guide business.

Hunters hire the small outfit and its dogs to track and tree bear at 15 bait sites from Andover to Canton.

If voters pass the referendum, which seeks to ban bear hunting with bait, dogs and traps, McPherson said he would be forced to quit the hunting business and sell his dogs.

“I’m doing it to support the dogs and to earn a wage,” he said. “If this goes away, I’d really hate to get rid of the dogs.”

At 5:30 a.m. on Aug. 16, brothers Ed and Fred McPherson loaded their four excited hounds into Ed’s pickup truck for a training excursion.

It was raining and foggy, not the best of conditions.

“Finding bear is not a definite thing. Hunting isn’t as easy as the referendum people say it is,” he said.

It could take hounds from 30 minutes to five hours to tree a bear. Then guides and hunters could take an hour or more to reach the spot. If the hunter selects and shoots that bear, it must be carried out.

“If you’ve got the dogs putting pressure on and really aggravating him, that will put him up,” McPherson said.

Most of the time, bears get tired and climb a tree for a break or even an extended snooze, ignoring the dogs below. Other bears stay grounded.

“In typical big bear fashion, a bear will walk with the dogs. He’ll stand them up rather than be treed,” McPherson said.

From Aug. 1 to the start of bait-hunting season (Aug. 30), Maine hound hunters can train on bear, using up to four dogs per hunter. Hound-hunting season is from Sept. 13 through Oct. 29

“The beauty part of starting the dogs off bait now is to get them bear-minded. Chase is bred into them,” McPherson said.

His first two bait sites in Andover had yet to attract any animal.

“Just because you’re making a food source available doesn’t guarantee anything. This year, it will be an exception to tree a bear in an hour,” he said.