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Now, thanks to a ballot question this November, those three methods are under threat on the argument that they are cruel and unsporting methods of hunting. The problem, hunters and state biologists say, is that they are the only way they can harvest the necessary number of bears needed to keep the population under control. 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Now, thanks to a ballot question this November, those three methods are under threat on the argument that they are cruel and unsporting methods of hunting. The problem, hunters and state biologists say, is that they are the only way they can harvest the necessary number of bears needed to keep the population under control. 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Facebook - Sticky" href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bostonglobe.com%2Fmetro%2F2014%2F08%2F30%2Fmaine-bear-hunt-challenged-ballot%2FoPbtDqPxNBxtUfgB8eMZkI%2Fstory.html%3Fevent%3Devent25%3Fevent%3Devent25&tMaine+puts+bear+baiting+on+the+Nov.+ballot" target="_blank" title="Share on Facebook"> <span>Share</span> </a> <a class="sticky-tools__button sticky-tools__button--share tw" data-omniture="BG Article Share Tools - Twitter - Sticky" href="http://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=Maine+puts+bear+baiting+on+the+Nov.+ballot&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bostonglobe.com%2Fmetro%2F2014%2F08%2F30%2Fmaine-bear-hunt-challenged-ballot%2FoPbtDqPxNBxtUfgB8eMZkI%2Fstory.html%3Fevent%3Devent25%3Fevent%3Devent25&via=BostonGlobe" target="_blank" title="Share on Twitter"> <span>Tweet</span> </a> <a class="sticky-tools__button sticky-tools__button--share sticky-comments" data-omniture="Article_Comments - Sticky" href="#comments"> <span></span> <p class="js-comment-count sticky-comments-count"></p> <p class="js-comment-count-label sticky-comments-count-label"></p> </a> </div>   <figure itemprop="associatedMedia" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" class="figure lead-figure full"> <img itemprop="contentUrl" src="//www.bostonglobe.com/rf/image_r/Boston/2011-2020/2014/08/31/BostonGlobe.com/Metro/Images/bear-big-9774.r.jpg" data-fullsrc="//c.o0bg.com/rf/image_960w/Boston/2011-2020/2014/08/31/BostonGlobe.com/Metro/Images/bear-big-9774.jpg" alt="Wayne Plummer, who runs Northern Pride Lodge with his wife, brought buckets of bear bait out in Kokadjo, Maine." /> <figcaption class="figcaption"> <p class="credit">Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff</p> <p>Wayne Plummer, who runs Northern Pride Lodge with his wife, brought buckets of bear bait out in Kokadjo, Maine.</p> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="byline"> <b class="author"> By <a title="More Stories by Billy Baker" href="/staff/baker" rel="author"><span itemprop="name">Billy Baker</span></a></b>Globe Staff   <time itemprop="datePublished" datetime="2014-08-31 04:00">August 31, 2014</time> <p></p> </div> <div class="article-text" itemprop="articleBody">      <p id="U741084529002LmD" style="">KOKADJO, MAINE — It’s 9:30 at night, deep in the woods of northern Maine, and about a dozen people are waiting with excitement as Wayne Plummer backs a white pickup truck to the game pole at his hunting lodge on First Roach Pond.</p> <p>It’s the first night of Maine’s bear hunting season, and in the back of the truck is a black bear, the first kill of the season for the hunters who pay Plummer $2,000 a week to guide them to a clear shot.</p> <div class='multimedia-template'> @@include('html/html.html') @@include('html/js.html') </div> <p class="skip-nav article-more"> <a href="#skip-target1">Continue reading below</a> </p> <div class="ad aside" id="ad_bigbox1"></div> <a id="skip-target1"></a> <p>This year, the demand for spots on Plummer’s bear hunts has been extraordinary. That’s because many fear it will be “the last bear hunt,” or at least the last one where they’ll be able to hunt bears the way they’ve always hunted bears in Maine.</p> <p>“Man, he’s a beauty,” Plummer’s wife, Barbara, says as he slides the bear out of the back of the pickup truck, forces two metal hooks into the flesh behind its ankles, then hoists it up on the pole so that its full scale and raw majesty unfurl. “Check out the claws on those fore legs.”</p> <p>Hours before, the 240-pound bear was gorging itself on old doughnuts and pastries that had been strategically placed by Plummer in a barrel in a remote area of the woods when it was shot through the heart and lungs by a bow hunter hidden in a tree stand above.</p>           <p>This method of hunting — baiting — is either the problem with bear hunting in Maine or the solution for bear management in Maine, depending on whom you ask. This November, the state of Maine will ask its voters.</p> <p>At stake in the ballot question are the three main methods hunters have long used to hunt bears in Maine: dogs, traps, and bait. One of the many great qualities about bears is that they’re not easy to kill, and luring them with bait — what’s known colloquially as “the jelly doughnut law” — is by far the most successful method.</p> <div class="aside mod-a promo feat-pq"> <div class="box"> <blockquote> <p>Right now, there are an estimated 30,000 black bears in Maine, and the population has been growing steadily for some time.</p> </blockquote> <i class="cap"><img alt="Quote Icon" src="/rw/SysConfig/WebPortal/BostonGlobe/Framework/images/icon-promo-quote-red.gif"></i> </div> </div> <p>Proponents of the ballot question, particularly the Humane Society of the United States, which has thrown its marketing and money into the campaign, say the referendum is simply a way to introduce “fair chase” to the hunting of bears, making the entire exercise less cruel and more sporting. </p> <p>Opponents, among them all the large Maine hunting organizations as well as the state biologists charged with protecting the health of the bear population, say it will cripple their ability to harvest bear meat and manage the population — as it is, hunters fall well short of the number the state would like them to kill — leading to a population explosion that will result in decimation from disease and starvation. Isn’t that, they ask, more cruel?</p> <div class="wide"> <img alt="Wayne Plummer bent down to field dress a bear for a hunter after the first day of bear hunting in Kokadjo, Maine. Hunters pay him $2,000 a week to guide them to a clear shot." data-fullsrc="//c.o0bg.com/rf/image_1920w/Boston/2011-2020/2014/08/31/BostonGlobe.com/Metro/Images/BearHunting07[1].jpg" src="//c.o0bg.com/rf/image_r/Boston/2011-2020/2014/08/31/BostonGlobe.com/Metro/Images/BearHunting07[1].r.jpg"> <div class="figcaption"> <p class="credit">JESSICA RINALDI/GLOBE STAFF</p> <p>Wayne Plummer bent down to field dress a bear for a hunter after the first day of bear hunting in Kokadjo, Maine. Hunters pay him $2,000 a week to guide them to a clear shot.</p> </div> </div> <p>Ten years ago, Maine voters were essentially asked this same ballot question. And, broadly speaking, it came down to a division of the two Maines. Southern Maine, where the human population is concentrated, mostly voted in favor of the ban. The rest of Maine, where the bear population, and bear hunting, is concentrated, mostly voted against it. It was defeated with 53 percent of the vote.</p> <p>This time around, the hunters are worried the vote could go the other way. So is Randy Cross.</p> <p>Cross is one of the two bear biologists for the state’s Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife. He handled the field work for decades and says that no person on earth has handled more bears than he. “It’s not even close,” he said.</p> <p>Cross has devoted his adult life to the Maine black bear. He says no one worries more about them than he, and no one loves them more then he. Nothing, he says, has scared him like this ballot initiative.</p> <p>“We would no longer be able to control population growth if we lost these very effective tools,” he said. </p> <p>There is, Cross says, a romantic idea of letting nature take its course. “A lot of people think that’s the best. But I’m the one who actually goes out and puts my hands on bears. I’m the one who has to see it when a bear dies quietly in the woods from starvation. It’s not a pretty thing to see a cub that hasn’t made it 300 yards from its den.”</p> <p>Right now, he said, bears are thriving. “It’s happy days for bears in Maine.” If voters take away the ability to hunt effectively, he said, it’s going to turn that situation into one of desperation within 10 years. Starving bears will wind up foraging in residential areas. “It would not only be an ecological catastrophe for bears living in the woods, it would also be a tremendous problem for people . . . There would be more conflicts between bears and people, and that becomes a safety risk at some point.”</p> <p>There are an estimated 30,000 black bears in