KINGFIELD — Hunters, guides and their supporters are getting ready for another battle over bear hunting — specifically trapping, baiting and hunting with dogs — with opponents, who plan to bring a referendum limiting these techniques to the voters in 2014.

On Thursday night, James Cote, director of the Maine Wildlife Conservation Council, met with a crowd of supporters at Webster Hall and shared his goals in the battle against the referendum and those who protest that these hunting methods are inhumane and unnecessary.

The Farmington resident said that although a proposal to eliminate these three methods was defeated in 2004, the margin of victory was slim and shouldn’t be taken for granted. Money raised by both camps will be used to woo voters.

Mainers for Fair Bear Hunting, a coalition of groups including the Humane Society of United States, formed over the summer after the Legislature failed to act to limit bear hunting.

Current Maine law allows bears to be trapped, shot over bait and hunted with dogs. Those in favor of these methods note the need to manage the bear population and say that allowing hunters to thin the population annually is efficient and provides a boost to the economy. Hunters hire guides, pay for lodging and food, licenses and equipment.

Opponents don’t agree the benefits justify the methods. 

“When Maine voters are asked if they want to ban what may appear to be more extreme ways to harvest the bear population, they should understand the issues,” Cote said.

According to Maine’s Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, the current bear management program stabilizes the bear population for both hunters and viewers, while minimizing confrontations.

The cultural divides raises the emotional temperature during debates on the subject. Cote, a Franklin County native, said he was in North Berwick recently doing a presentation, and a man in the audience eyed him suspiciously during his speech.

“How do you D.C. guys think you can come up here and tell us what to do?” the man asked Cote later in the evening.

Hunters should understand that this referendum isn’t about bear hunting, Cote said, but is instead an attempt to change a traditional way of life. The biggest foe of hunters’ rights is the Humane Society of the United States, he said.

In comparison, the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine, Maine Professional Guides Association, Maine Trappers, Maine Bowhunters and the Maine Sporting Dog Association, along with other groups, have indicated they will support the effort to defeat the proposal.

Cote said the three candidates for governor also have indicated their support for defeating the proposed referendum.

Local guide Roger Lambert said he was frustrated with the lack of understanding that many anti-hunting individuals express. People cook and eat fish or meat but often don’t consider how it got to their table. Dispatching an animal sometimes is a practical choice.

“How many of you have set a trap to catch a mouse?” he asked the audience.

Money will make the difference in winning or losing, but Maine residents must show their support before the battle begins, Cote explained, and social media will play a bigger role this time around.

“I worry about what happens if this passes,” Wilton guide Robert Parker said. “This is about how we manage wildlife in this state and about the future of hunting.”

He sees the Humane Society’s attempt to ban bear hunting as the start of a ban on all hunting in the United States.

“Ontario (Canada) lost their spring hunt,” Parker said. “It doesn’t get any more real than this.”

Speakers at Thursday’s meeting said that Maine’s wildlife biologists set limits on the bear population and if the hunters and guides have to track the elusive creatures with little or no success, the biologists will have to find other ways to keep the bear population under control and future problems with human-bear confrontations may be passed along to local law enforcement.