Dear Editor:

As a lover of animals, it saddens me that our state is the last in the nation to allow the trapping, hounding and baiting of bears. Maine already forbids trapping, hounding, and baiting deer and moose. But we allow people to trap bears in cruel traps and kill them at point-blank range while their heads are stuffed in a barrel of donuts.

I have worked, lived and hunted in the Maine woods in Monson; Bear Central. I have been hired to clean up Bear Bait at Upper Roach Pond. It is disgusting, nasty stuff. The reason it needed to be cleaned up is because no one was going to buy the property with a barrel full of rotten meat. It destroys a wide natural area when it is put out.

Former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura put it well when we said of bear baiting: “Going out there and putting jelly donuts down, and Yogi comes up and sits there and thinks he's found the mother lode for five days in a row — and then you back-shoot him from a tree? That ain't sport — that's an assassination.”

Maine was the first state in the nation to pass an animal cruelty law. Today we’re falling behind on animal welfare by allowing the horrible cruelty of trapping, hounding and baiting bears. That’s why I’ll be voting yes on Question 1 next month.

Finally, the line that Maine black bears are dangerous is a laughable. Every bear I have seen in the wild has turned tail and run.

Get out in the woods, hike, explore, enjoy nature and go hunting. Don't pay for a safari when you are shooting ducks in a barrel.

Jim Skiff

Bristol