Maine bear bait vote sparks interest around US

WILTON, Maine (AP) — In Maine, a hunter can shoot a bear while it's nose-deep in a barrel of doughnuts, after it's been chased up a tree with dogs, or when it's snared in a cable trap — but that could change in days, and hunters and animal rights advocates around the country are watching.

Bears are hunted in 32 states but Maine has the most permissive rules. It is the only one that allows hunters to use three methods — bait, dogs and traps — decried by animal rights groups and targeted by a Nov. 4 ballot proposal that would ban them all.

National hunting groups oppose the ban because they believe it could set a precedent that prompts other states to try to roll back hunting rights. Some animal rights activists see it as a dress rehearsal for referendums in other states that allow hunting methods they perceive as cruel.

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Australia to bait and trap cane toads – via Herp Digest

SYDNEY, June 13 (UPI) -- Australian scientists say the poison invasive cane toads use to devastate native species could be turned into a weapon against the toads themselves.

Researchers at the University of Sydney, in collaboration with the University of Queensland, have determined the poison can be used as 'bait' in traps set in bodies of water to catch toad tadpoles.

The biggest hurdle to eliminating cane toads is that a single clutch of eggs laid at a time by one female can number 30,000 or more, they said.

"This means that even if you catch and kill 99 percent of the adult toads in an area, the few that are left can produce so many offspring that before you know it you are back to where you started -- just as many cane toads as ever," Sydney researcher Rick Shine said.

The scientists found secretions from the shoulder glands of dead toads can be used to bait traps, as it is cheap, easy to obtain and highly attractive to cane toad tadpoles but repels the tadpoles of native frogs.

"A chemical 'bait' created from the toads' poison is a real magnet for [cane] toad tadpoles," Shine said.

"When we use this chemical as bait in a funnel-trap we catch thousands of toad tadpoles and almost nothing else," he said. "In one natural pond, we collected more than 40,000 toad tadpoles in less than a week. And I think we got them all -- over the next few weeks, not a single toad emerged from that pond."

Cane toads, initially brought into the country to control beetles threatening sugar cane plantations, are spreading through tropical Australia with a devastating impact on native species, researchers said.

For a photo of Rick Shine: http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2012/06/13/Australia-to-bait-and-trap-cane-toads/UPI-39571339621575/#ixzz1xxeNOmVP

Sport hunting lion and leopard? Baited hunts and hunting with hounds

Big cat sporting hunts - Just how sporting are they?
March 2012. As part of Wildlife Extra's follow up into the revelations about Donald Trump Junior and his brother's shooting and elephant, a leopard and other big game in Zimbabwe, we have looked some more at the hunting industry and how it operates. 

One of the main that reasons that hunters use to justify their ‘sport' is that it is a sport - The hunter pitting his wits against the wild beast to overcome their mighty (and often not so mighty) foe and overcoming against all the odds. Most responsible hunting operations have published a code of conduct and that almost always includes a guide for "Fair chase". 

THERE ARE 3 MAIN WAYS TO HUNT -

• Stalking (walking around looking for prey)
• Driven (Hunter remains in 1 place whilst others move prey towards him/her)
• Baited (hunter uses bait to lure prey into shooting range). As far as we can tell, baiting is the norm for lion & leopard hunts, though in some place dogs are used to hunt leopards too.

Baited lion hunts 
Many lion & leopard hunts are conducted using bait, usually some plains game that has been shot for the purpose. Once a suitable spot has been chosen, the bait is tied to a tree or similar, and the hunter takes cover in a hide some 20 metres from the bait. If the opportunity arises, the hunter will shoot the lion (or leopard), or near the bait. According to safaribwana.com "Due to their secretive nature it would be very difficult to successfully hunt leopard on a 14 or 21 day safari without baiting or dogs."

Yet the various hunting codes of conduct that we have looked at make it clear that animals being hunted should be hunted in conditions that are as natural as possible. The Confederation of Hunters Associations of South Africa policy on Ethical Hunting and Fair Chase states "A recreationally hunted animal should exist as a naturally interacting individual of a wild sustainable population." Leaving a bait to lure lions and leopards surely goes against policy, as baiting is hardly a natural interaction, and it certainly isn't a ‘fair chase'.

Did the Trumps bait their leopard?
Hunting Legends, the hunting company that organised the Trump's hunt in Zimbabwe, state that "Hunting Legends has some of the very best hunting areas to hunt Leopard and we have a high success ratio based on our knowledge of the areas and our excellent hunting staff, who know how to put the cats on. Hunt with hounds or over bait, whichever you prefer."

We wonder which the Trump boys used - Bait or hounds? 

Hunting with hounds
In some places, leopards and other animals are still hunted with hounds. The hounds are usually used for driving a leopard into a tree allowing the hunter to shoot the cat. This appears to happen mostly in Zimbabwe, though we have also found it in Mozambique, & Namibia and it appears to be only allowed on private land.

http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/trump-leopard.html 

Area Man Kicked Off Mineola Nature Preserve Trying to Bait Bigfoot in His Toyota

A man from Lancaster spent Monday night in a nature preserve 75 miles east of Dallas trying to lure Bigfoot to his black Toyota sedan, police say.


Mineola Police Capt. Jack Newman tells Unfair Park he responded to a trespassing call Tuesday morning to find the man camped out in his car along the Sabine River, with bait on the roof of the car he said was meant to draw the reclusive forest giant out of hiding.

"He had some pieces of orange and a piece of steak and some nuts right on the top of his car," Newman says. Next to a tree about 20 yards away, he says, the man had scattered a few more orange pieces. "I don't know if he'd been trying to coax him over to the car or what."

"He'd heard something about Bigfoot down around the Sabine River," Newman says, though as far as he knows, the biggest wildlife draws around the preserve are deer and wild hogs. Fanning the flames of mystery, Newman says he can't release the name of the man, who he says left the scene when asked. "He didn't know he wasn't supposed to be in there," Newman says.

A report from KMOO radio in Mineola, though, says there have been fresh rumors of a Bigfoot sighting on private property near the preserve. One possible explanation: the Texas Bigfoot Research Conservancy held its annual conference in nearby Tyler in late October, though as Noah Bailey pointed out after hearing me on the phone this afternoon, Mineola has been a hotbed of Sasquatch activity for years.

Buster Green, a Mineola Nature Preserve caretaker who works for the city, says he spotted the man Tuesday morning and spoke to the would-be hunter briefly before calling police. "He was rolled up there sleeping in his vehicle when I come by," he says. Green says the man had a camera in his car; KMOO reports he was otherwise unarmed. "He said he'd come down here on kind of a whim," Green says.

"He was a big boy. He's over six-foot, 230-ish," Green says. "He didn't need nothing to be hunting Bigfoot. He could've gone down there with just a switch."

By Patrick Michels