Bear Hunting Tips for Beginners. Beating Bear's Sense of Smell

Perhaps one of the biggest and more elusive games for hunters in North America is the black bear and even when its hunting is restricted to particular small areas, every year more and more hunters are enthusiast about black bears hunting, but going out for bears is not as easy as it seems.

Many beginners think that being such a big animal, going out for bears will be easy and that's really a mistake; bears are able to be aware of human presence even before getting on the hunter's visual range and will simply avoid getting near to humans unless some simple but useful tips are kept in mind.

All about bears hunting may be summarized on just one word: Stealth.

Bear senses of smell and earing are simply keener than humans', especially smell because while the human nose has only around six millions olfactory receptors, the bear's nose has 12.6 trillions of them; in fact the bears sense of smell is 2100 times more sensitive than humans, allowing them to smell what you are eating 20 miles away!

With such a wonderfull, impressive smell it's mandatory to mask your human odor, otherwise bears will stay away from your blind. To do so, every tip related to human odor cover is useful (click here for more info) but there are a couple of extra tips that will help a lot.

1. If your city has clorinated water supply, go to the pet shop and buy a bottle of aquarium water conditioner, afterwards put it on a gallon water and use it to wash the clothes you will be using when hunting after the last rinse. This will help to eliminate clorine smell, something that bears will identify as unnatural on their territory, making the animals to stay away.

2. If you smoke, simply don't waste your time stalking a bear; once again the cigarettes smell will be detected and associated to human presence, so bears will go far from you.

Of course every other technique to mask your odor will be useful but perhaps you should know about something loved by bears: Mint smell.

Bears really drive crazy about mint and they will look for it actively if the odor is on the air, hence the use of mint toothpaste the morning before going out for hunting, taking a bath with mint soap and even chewing mint gum will give you and edge since mint smell will attract bears for sure.

In addition you may take with you some mint tea to drink inside your blind and even have some mint tea bags on your pocket. Doing this you will be increasing dramatically your chances to get a big bear.

On the other hand, once your odor has been masked and mint used to attract bears to the area, you will need to tempt the animals with something irresistible for them: Food.

High carb foods are not seen naturally on the woods and bears will always associate it to humans presence, however being a rich source of energy to gain fat for the winter, usually they will take the risk to get closer to you if there's a good supply of bread, pasta and cookies, so cover your human odor, tempt bears with food and they will show up soon.

If you are still enough and your stealth is good, bears will think that they found abandoned food and will relax while eating it, giving you a chance to take them from your blind.

Easy? It could be... but there's a lot more to keep in mind as you will aware on a next post.