Over the past 100 years the status of Maine's bears has evolved from big pest to big game species. In the 1950s, when I was child in rural Maine, bears were hunted year-round. One of my earliest childhood memories is that of a bear breaking into my grandparent's barn to kill a calf. The 450-pound bruin was shot several days later breaking into a neighbor's pigpen. The state paid a bounty on that bear and others from 1837 until 1957. Since the late 1950s, bears have received increased protection and monitoring, due largely to bear hunters contributing $6.4 million annually to Maine's rural economies.

Mainers For Fair Bear Hunting (MFBH), a group funded by the Humane Society of the U.S., is responsible for Maine’s Nov. 4 Ballot Question 1: Do you want to ban the use of bait, dogs or traps in bear hunting except to protect property, public safety, or for research?

In a contentious battle to win votes, MFBH and the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (IFW) are guilty of distorting the truth. MFBH's campaign is emotion-based with bears labeled as "beloved, majestic species,” a description that my grandparents and many rural Mainers would call hogwash. Tugging on our heartstrings is the only way MFHB can win because science is not on their side. With a population of 30,000 strong, bears are not endangered, threatened or declining.

MFBH has committed many missteps. They've claimed that junk food is the reason for our large bear population. Better nutrition has led to improved bear productivity and survival rates. However, population growth is not due to "seven million pounds of junk food," as claimed in MFBH televised ads.

The increase in bears is due to a boon of natural foods. Large forest clearcuts have created thousands of acres of raspberries, elderberries, chokecherries, blackberries, wild raisins, and hazelnuts, a smorgasbord for bears. An abundance of nutritional browse in young regenerating forests has bolstered moose populations, benefitting bears, which eat moose carcasses and calves.

MFBH also claims that fair chase hunting is the only humane way to kill a bear. If humane is defined as killing an animal quickly, then the fair chase claim is false. I interviewed many "fair chase" bear hunters who sought their quarry without dogs or bait. Hunters who killed bears over bait piles were also interviewed. What I learned was this: fair chase, although it sounds noble, results in the highest incidence of injured bears, and the reason is obvious — it's exceeding difficult to lethally shoot a running bear. On the other hand, bears attracted to bait piles were killed more quickly and cleanly. So, the relevant question then is, what's more humane: Shooting and maiming a fleeing bear during "fair chase," or instantly killing a standing bear eating a donut?

According to MFBH, fair-chase hunting will attract more ethical hunters, resulting in the same number of bears killed (close to 3,000) with today's techniques. Referendum proponents point to Colorado as a model for Maine to emulate.

Colorado, we're told, has maintained relatively high bear hunting success rates, even after an end to bear baiting.

What MFBH doesn't say is that Maine's dense forests are the polar opposite of Colorado's open-terrain where bears can be seen at great distances. Except on Maine's Beech ridges, where bears are hunted "fairly," it's difficult to see beyond 50 feet in much of Maine's forest. Bears here are harder to stalk, see and shoot; hence, fair chase is very limited in Maine.

The hypocrisy of the yes voters is dumbfounding. If it's immoral to shoot bears baited with donuts, how is it moral to eat lobsters, caught in traps (baited with dead alewives) and cooked alive in boiling water?

How can anyone vote yes on the premise that shooting bears is "unethical," then eat tuna from a 500-pound fish that died gasping for dissolved oxygen on the deck of a fishing trawler? Incidentally, since 1970, overfishing has caused an 80 percent decline in Atlantic Bluefin tuna stocks. Furthermore, tuna fishing causes the unintentional death (by-catch) of countless seabirds, dolphins, sea turtles, and other species. Meanwhile, since 1970, bear populations have increased in the northeast, and hunting bears causes no accidental "by-catch" deaths.

IFW has also committed mistakes, including providing conflicting information about feeding wildlife. IFW sanctions baiting bears with food; however, the agency advises people to take in bird feeders and trash containers nightly if there's a chance of a bear roaming our backyards. Television ads of uniformed state biologists and wardens, urging citizens to vote no, is troubling because they're delivering the LePage Administration's message. Many state biologists and wardens are opposed to baiting, hounding, and trapping.

Unfortunately, their silent voices won't benefit the public discourse because the governor and IFW Commissioner Chandler Woodcock are intolerant of dissenting opinions. In 2004, when Maine last voted on a nearly identical referendum, then Governor John Baldacci wisely instructed state biologists and wardens to answer science questions, and to keep out of partisan politics.

Since New Hampshire banned all three controversial hunting practices, bears there have not eaten a child kicking a ball outdoors. So, what's the purpose of the IFW fear mongering ad warning of the possibility of children being harmed by bears if Question 1 wins?

Question 1 is a referendum on "unethical" hunting, an unresolvable issue because what's ethical to one person is unethical to another. Killing a bear via baiting, hounding, and trapping is against my personal ethics; however, it's wrong to impose my hunting ethics on others.

Perhaps we'd all be wiser adhering to the words of Aldo Leopold, one of America's conservation giants. On the subject of hunting, Aldo Leopold wrote in A Sand County Almanac (1949), "The ethics of sportsmanship is not a fixed code, but must be formulated and practiced by the individual, with no referee but the Almighty."

Emotions and science aside, I'm voting no because it comes down to a trust issue question: Whom do I most trust, our state bear biologists or the Humane Society in D.C.? I'm siding with biologists, regardless of the manipulations of LePage and Woodcock.

Ron Joseph is a retired Maine wildlife biologist.

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