Two weeks remain before voters decide whether Maine keeps or loses its annual fall bear hunt using bait, hounds and traps.

Both opponents and proponents of the issue have been shooting information bullets at each other. They’ve also been running television ads designed to appeal to voters’ emotions.

In August, the Eaton Peabody Consulting Group of Augusta completed a 70-page report titled, “The Bear Economy.”

It was strategically and politically released on Sept. 30 by Maine’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Council, a sportsmen’s group formed to oppose Question 2, said council campaign manager Edith Leary.

“The Bear Economy” report analyzes the economic impact of bear hunting in Maine and the referendum’s possible economic consequences.

According to the report, if voters OK the bear referendum, Maine would lose between 563 and 770 existing and potential new jobs. The state would also lose up to $62.4 million in average annual economic activity.

Additionally, Leary said Tuesday that Aroostook County, which accounted for 52.7 percent of the 2002 bear harvest, would be hard hit.

“In Patten, Town Manager Rhonda Harvey said the bear hunt was more important than the deer hunt. That speaks volumes,” Leary said.

On Oct. 14, proponents countered with their own report by California economist Jennifer Fearing and Michigan economist Donald Garlit, titled “Baiting Voters with Junk Science: Question 2 Opponents’ Analysis Not Even Bearly’ Accurate.”

Robert Fisk, the Falmouth man behind the bear referendum and founder of Maine Citizens for Fair Bear Hunting, said his group asked Fearing and Garlit to review “The Bear Economy.”

“The Bear Economy” report, Fisk said, is a “doom and gloom report that should not be taken seriously.”

The 22-page Fearing and Garlit document states that Eaton Peabody based a significant portion of its conclusion – that $62.4 million and 770 jobs would be lost if Question 2 passes – on telephone surveys.

Of the bear hunters surveyed, 25 were residents, 20 were nonresidents, and 21 were professional Maine guides, fewer than 0.5 percent of all Maine bear hunters, Fearing’s and Garlit’s report states.

Fisk said Tuesday that in order to provide valid survey data, Eaton Peabody should have surveyed a minimum of 400 people, not 45 people from names provided by Maine’s Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.

Fisk said the critique confirmed that, “There is no basis for opponents’ claims that Question 2 would devastate Maine’s economy.”

But on Tuesday, Noreen G. Norton, Eaton Peabody’s director of economic development, and co-writer of “The Bear Economy,” said that she stands by the report.

The statistics in the report, she said, are projected numbers, but they’re “conservative and realistic” numbers.

Both opponents and proponents of Question 2 have also released prime-time, statewide television ads purportedly bearing out their claims.

In the council’s first ad, Leary said they used Maine Bear Project Leader Jennifer Vashon to establish that the state’s bear population must be managed by wildlife biologists, not ballot-box biologists.

The second ad, she said, used Bridgton Animal Control Officer Jack Knight to say that bears are dangerous, and that nuisance complaints would increase if the referendum were approved.

The third ad concerns economic impact, Leary said. In it, a grandmother says she will lose her sporting lodge, which she needs to take care of her granddaughter, if the referendum passes.

A fourth ad, released Monday night, repeats the charge that an increasing bear population would be “very dangerous.”

Fisk called the ads “100 percent scare tactics that are either factually wrong or gross exaggerations.”

Maine Citizens’ bottom line, he said, is that Maine is the only state in the nation that allows three “cruel, unfair and unsportsmanlike” bear hunting practices: baiting, trapping and hounding.

Regarding the council’s second ad, which contained information about a Standish teenager being attacked by a bear earlier this year, Fisk said, “We can’t prove that it was staged. He was taking pictures of a sow bear with cubs, and the sow bluff-charged him.”

As for the third ad, Fisk said the lodge owner, Gloria Curtis, is trying to sell her place for $400,000. He also debunked the fourth ad.

“In over 200 years, with all the people that have traipsed through the woods, not one person has been attacked or killed,” Fisk said.

So far, in the television ad wars, Fisk said Maine Citizens has run two ads, and will be running two more before Nov. 2.

“They got a two-and-a-half-week lead in getting the public to believe their scare tactic of dangerous bears, but we have and will match their TV ads, even though they outspend us 2-to-1.

“But as long as we get our ad out enough, we will win,” Fisk said.

Pullout box:

Referendum Question 2:

“Do you want to make it a crime to hunt bears with bait, traps or dogs, except to protect property, public safety or for research?”

Pullout box:

“The Bear Economy,” a 70-page economic impact analysis of the bear hunt ban referendum’s potential impact on Maine by the Eaton Peabody Consulting Group of Augusta, can be found online at www.samcef.org.

Its 22-page counterpart, “Baiting Voters with Junk Science: Question 2 Opponents’ Analysis Not Even Bearly’ Accurate,” by two out-of-state economists, can be found at www.fairbearhunting.org/pages/1/index.htm.

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