Any tricks? We had a problem last year up near mentone with a big bear that ruined about 4 feeders last year (got pics of him)

He'll get your cameras too.

They will destroy any and everything in sight we changed to gravity feeders and they haven't destroyed any since.

The only solution I have found is to just not feed......

Get a boat winch with 30+ feet of cable. Convert your feeder into a hanging model, assuming its a tripod now. Suspend it from a big tree limb.

We aren't allowed to nail anything to the planted pines and such -so I bought two Ameri-step stands and [$33 @ walmart now] put them up about 10 feet , then wrapped aluminum flashing metal around the tree trunk and wired it to the tree.
I put 31 gallon trash cans [$20 walmart] on the stand -they will hold nearly 150 lbs. of corn and at my throw setting the corn will last a month .
I fill them by climbing an old 8 foot ladder that I tie to the tree , not too bad when you only do it every few weeks.

The bears down here have learned how to take a feeder down in seconds -one guy got it on video -took less than ten seconds from the time the bear came on the game cam.
Two animals that seem to enjoy destroying everything -bears and squirrels . The squirrels have a date with a CZ 17hmr next weekend --I'm told we will have a bear season this year and our lease will get one tag.
I think the boat trailer crank is the easiest though.

Tried that years ago......they eventually got it down too. I don't know how but they did......

yall can have all them feeder destroying bastages. And I thought our hogs problem was bad!

10 4 appreciate the ideas guys...sucker is about 250 plus lbs and phat! We have pics of him up next to the cam and a few more of him literally sitting in the middle of the green field during deer season in broad daylight in the am

Oh your fun is just starting......just wait till you are covered up with them and see them as regular as the deer.....yep your fun is just starting

are you sure it's a bear could be somebody from Baltimore

haha wouldn't surprise me...but they'd be stupid to come down here cause we have guns and are not the least afraid to use em

I also hunt in Florida and we have so many bears here that bear proofing a feeder has become an art and an absolute necessity.

A method we've stumbled on that seems to have worked for a whole season now is tying a cable to a tree about 19' up and then run it over to another tree about 20 feet away and 19' up on that tree we tie off a pulley to another tree with cable.

Then the main cable goes down to a boat winch and we lock the handle down with a cable lock because bears will fiddle with it until they get it unlocked and you're out of luck and it makes it hard to steal.... LOL

The feeder with bucket is suspended from the cable between the trees on another pulley so it can slide back and forth so when you lower or raise the feeder with the winch it self centers between the two trees.

This way you can easily unlock the cable lock and lower the bucket to fill it from the ground.

The missing piece that most hunters don't do is to now bear proof the trees. That was tough because they would just climb one of the trees and shake the cable until the feeder came apart so we finally used some tin roofing we had left over from roofing our stands to wrap the bottom 8 feet of the trees (it starts above the boat winch on one of the trees) and VOILA.... The bears don't even bother trying to climb the trees.

The deer were a bit cautious around the tin roofing wrapped trees for a week or so then decided to ignore the strange looking trees and we haven't had ANY more bear problems since.

Works for us anyway.... Someone might come up with a better strategy to bear proof the trees but this was fast and easy and non-destructive to the timber companies precious pine trees.

We use a couple of tie down straps wrapped around the tin to hold the it against the trees and put them up high enough the bears can't reach them.

Bob

Awesome ideas guys! Guy I hunt with went up to turn on the trail cameras and to do some other work, and 4 out of the 5 feeders were torn up so bad that he is buying new ones...but def might try some of these ideas out!!

Saw a show with a cabin in Alaska that bears would break into. They took a piece of plywood about 3'x3' and put nails through it and turned it nails up. They placed it in front of the door like a door mat. Welcome home.

20 ft steel pole with a 4ft arm welded on it. Mount a roller out on the arm and link it to another roller mounted up around the top of the pole which then runs your cable to the boat winch. Mount the pole 4ft deep in concrete. It's a really simple fix that we came up with after they destroyed everything else.

What ever pole or tree they monkey with -place a box of small treble hooks tied 4" apart with fine fishing wire .
The kind of wire used for toothy fish.
They'll have other thoughts than tearing down your stuff when they have a few small treble hooks in their paws.
Don't do anything like bait hooks or anything like that though .