What Do You Think about Bear Hunting Techniques in Maine? [Poll]

Once again, Mainers are being asked to consider a ban on the three techniques that have been used in Maine by bear hunters for years.

Those techniques include trapping, baiting, and hunting with dogs, and they're opposed by a group that has been busy gathering signatures to have them banned.

Maine's Secretary of State, Matt Dunlap, says Mainer's for Fair Bear Hunting have garnered more than enough certified signatures to send the issue to the state legislature.

If the legislature fails to act on the measure it will go to Maine voters in the form of a referendum question on the November ballot.

Mainer's rejected the requested ban before, back in 2004.

The issue is surrounded by controversy because critics of the ban say the opposition is being driven and funded by outside groups with no knowledge of, or vested interest in, hunting laws in Maine.

Biologists with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife say they don't feel the hunting techniques are cruel, and they serve as an effective way of controlling the state's bear population.

Biologists explain that Maine's black bear population is robust, and without population control food becomes scarce, and that leads to disease and more nuisance bear encounters in urban areas as the bears search out food.

If you had to decide on whether or not to ban these hunting techniques today, what would you decide?