Activist: Hunting abuses exposed

The failed referendum called for banning the use of bait, traps, and hounds in hunting Maine's estimated 23,000 bears.

With 90 percent of the state's precincts reporting, those who opposed the ban had 333,550 votes, or 53 percent, and those who supported it had 292,035 votes, or 47 percent, in unofficial election returns.

Voters in Alaska also defeated a similar proposal that would have outlawed baiting black bears.

In Maine, the proposed hunting restrictions drew the most support in Cumberland County, with a ''yes" vote of 58 percent. The measure also won majorities in York and Knox counties. Maine's other 13 counties voted against the proposal.

The biggest margins of defeat came in counties where bear hunting is strongest: 69 percent in Piscataquis; 66 percent in Somerset; 65 percent in Aroostook; and 64 percent in Penobscot.

Edith Leary of the Maine Fish & Wildlife Conservation Council, which opposed the ban, said the results were no surprise.

''The raw fact is that in York County and Cumberland County there are more non-hunters and people who have not been exposed to black bears, and their economy would not have been affected by the referendum," she said.

Leary said sportsmen viewed the measure as ''a major threat, not only to their hunting heritage but to their livelihoods."

She welcomed Fisk's vow to continue to press his group's stance on wildlife and hunting-related issues in Maine. ''We can all get involved," she said.

Bear hunting is allowed in 28 states.

Going into Election Day, 11 allowed baiting and 17 allowed hunters to use dogs. Maine is the only state that allows all three methods: hounds, traps and bait.