To the editor: I would like to address the recent controversy of hunting bears over bait. In order for game managers to reach their harvest goal to balance bear populations you have to give hunters the leeway to use any tactics they can within reason to be successful. Most hunters have only a couple of days to hunt if they’re lucky, making it even harder to score on a bear. The following are the reasons to use bait for bears. A) The same bears that are in your neighborhoods are the same bears that travel through the larger wooded areas. They have a large home range so whether you hunt the minimum legal safe distance from houses or 1000 yards further it makes no difference except for the fact you have a better chance for killing a problem bear closer to a residential area. B) Hunting over bait is not easy by any means. You must wait hours and hours sometimes in the biting cold and it’s still no guarantee the bear will even come to your bait pile. C) If you hunt near an apple tree it is the same as using bait. If you use some kind of attracting scent, it is the same as using bait, It does not matter you are just using a bears weakness (food sources) to make a successful kill. After all, I wouldn’t go fishing without a worm on my hook. D) Hunting over bait allows you to get a good view of the animal you want to take and allow time to ascertain if It is a mother with cubs or not, so you can make sure the bear you are going to take is a single one. You can also let the bear get into a solid position in front of your stand so you can make an accurate of shot as possible resulting in a quick humane kill. E) The bottom line is our bear population is exploding pushing bears into residential areas and now our cities competing for finite food sources and our habitat is being lost to development more and more everyday. Even if you stopped all building tomorrow you still have to manage the remaining habitat. More bears are killed when you don’t hunt them, like now in our cities where the bear goes to waste at the taxpayers expense when licensed hunters can use these animals for the hide and meat and pay the state to do it. Goofballs like the BEAR group make goofy commercials, rent billboards, and print tee shirts costing thousands of dollars while the sporting community has and always will spend billions nationwide to buy and protect habitat which is the number one threat to all animals worldwide. Eric Bunk West Milford