Maine’s 2006 bear hunt is in full swing. During the next few weeks, approximately 10,000 licensed bear hunters will be in their tree stands. Most of these hunters will be in these elevated stands by mid-afternoon and stay until legal shooting time ends at dusk.

Contrary to the misguided public perception that hunting bears over bait sites is a slam dunk for the hunter, not every hunter will bring home a bear. In fact, depending upon weather, winds and natural forage conditions, only about 30 percent of bear hunters in Maine will tag a bruin. This contrasts sharply with Maine’s moose hunt in which 85 percent of hunters fill their tags.

This means that more than half of these hunters will go home empty-handed, but not without some wonderful memories. With or without bear activity, a late September afternoon spent in the solitude of the Maine woods can, by itself, be worth the price of admission. Typically, unsuccessful bear hunters go home with stories, if not bear roasts. Often a hunter will see a bear but hold off taking the shot because of cubs or a desire for a larger bear.

My best bear hunting experience to date didn’t involve a kill. For 20 minutes, I watched enthralled from my tree stand as a sow and two cubs enjoyed a bag of “culls” from Dunkin’ Donuts.

But bagging a big bruin for the meat and the mount remains the driving force behind the hunt. It is the annual bear harvest that keeps bear numbers in check, as the hunter serves as the bear population management tool of the professional wildlife manager.

Enter Jennifer Vashon, Maine’s leading bear wildife biologist. Vashon, you may recall, was the public spokesman for the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife during the referendum attempt to close down traditional bear hunting. She is an able professional, who knows bears and knows how to educate the public about bears and bear management in a quiet, logical and cool-headed manner.

Vashon says that hunters take about 15 percent of Maine’s estimated 23,000 bears each year.

“That harvest figure could go as high as 20 percent without creating any concern about our overall black bear numbers,” she says.

Vashon is willing to share her bear savvy with any hunter who harbors a curiosity about bear behavior. As one of the curious, I took some notes in a recent conversation with her about bear behavior.

• Bears breed every other year throughout the spring and even into the summer months. Nature has blessed females bears with a delayed egg mechanism that doesn’t accept fertilization until just before denning. Cubs are born in the den and stay with the mother denning over a second year, and then leaving the sow during the spring of the second year.

• Sows can be partial to their female offspring, sometimes allowing a female cub to den over the third year.

• Bears, while not the most efficient predators, can and do kill deer fawns and calf moose. Being omnivores they eat insects, carrion, vegetation, berries and nuts.

• Adult females bears aren’t the roamers that boars are. The sow’s range is 6-9 miles. The male bear will travel up to 100 miles in the fall looking for acorns and beechnuts just prior to denning.

• It is not unusual for bears to live to be 30 years of age. Most adult females weigh between 100-400 pounds. Males, on the other hand, tip the scales between 250-600 pounds. In 2004, David Pierce of Portage shot a male bear that weighed 590 lbs.

• Bears can run as fast as 35 mph.

• Bears have poor eyesight, but have an excellent sense of smell. Studies show that bears can smell things in trees, including hunters. If wind conditions and temperatures are right, bears can smell downwind up to 400 yards. (Hunters take note).

How is this bear season shaping up? Vashon says that Maine’s black bear population is as robust and healthy as ever. What is not known is whether the good wild berry and beechnut crops will keep the bears from visiting the baited sites this year.

We’ll know more after the bear baiting season ends Sept. 23. Meanwhile, good luck to all Maine bear hunters whose patronage means so much to this state’s rural economy. Please hunt safe, use a safety harness in your stands, and be watchful of sows with cubs. Above all, drink deeply of Maine’s September woods.

V. Paulk 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].