Count down to bear season!!

I have been busy, busy, busy!!!! Big E and Peter Coyote set off yesterday to New York, the Adirondacks, to pick up the last load of bear bait from Outback Bobs. Bob is semi retired as I don't know if guides ever really retire, and is letting his son Jake take over...well kind of, anyway. This is the first time that I have stayed home, but with so much going on, one of us had to stay...so me. However that turned out to be a good thing I think. I did get a call and looks like we may have 2 more hunters this year and that IS a good thing for business. I also picked up a small load of bait yesterday, and this morning I have to load up the crew and head south for another load of pastries. You may be thinking, well if you can get bait in Maine, why are you going to New York? Well, years ago getting bear bait was easy and inexpensive or at least or so expensive as it has become. Everyone got into selling bait and the prices went through the roof on a lot of it. One guy sells a 55 gallon drug of granola for only $300.00!!! Now when we first started buying bait, we were paying $25.00 a barrel for donuts and $300.00 for a ton of waste candy. However over the years we have experienced it all: opening the barrels to find ten inches of mold and the bait two feet short from the top. So when we started we knew we had to deal with eliminating this problem when we packed our barrels. We sell to a few customers which helps lower our cost. So how much bait does a guide need?? We figure it like this. In Maine, we can bait for a full month prior to opening day of bear season, so one has to figure what it will take to effectively bring in the bears. We start with a couple buckets of good old stink bait. Need I say anymore on that??? Then we start placing two five gallon buckets of pastries and toppings in the barrels. So it will take 2 full barrels of pastries per bait site for the pre-baiting season, and 2 full barrels of bait to continue during hunting season; therefore 4 barrels per bait site. We also gauge how many hunters we have coming and add another ten bait sites to that. Each hunter is guaranteed 2 bait sites to hunt from, and we use different areas for each week, starting with the furthest ones out the first couple of weeks and pull in closer the last two as we lose hunting time with the decreasing sunlight. So if one has 25 hunters, you need 50 bait sites plus 10, and if one needs 4 barrels of bait per site....well you get it, thats a lot of bait!!! So one must collect as much as possible, and the fact that we sell bear bait as well....then it becomes a year long effort. Where's the cream filling??? At Ktaadn Guide Service!!! Now you understand also why we have bears in the bait shed, plus raccoons, skunks, squirrels, weasels, coyotes, fox, shiba inu's and one Akita, oh and a few of the neighbors cats. Well, time to make the donuts!!