Bear outside my tent

[Arthur]

There must be hundreds if not thousands of videos and articles on what to do when encountering either a black or grizzly bear on the trail. I am laying in my tent and I hear heavy breathing and walking around my tent. I am pretty sure its not a human but not sure about elk, coyote, bear, or other mammal. I have no food or “human” things in my tent other than me. Do I lay real still, make a lot of noise, wake up others in the camp if there are any, get up and get out of the tent. Or what? Not sure I have heard of any authoritative advise or if anyone knows what is best. Thoughts or references?

[David Thomas]

Black bears: I yell at.
Grizzlies: I gently let them know I’m around.
Polar bears: I try to avoid.

[John S.]

Start talking in regular voice, don’t scream, while getting bear spray/firearm ready. Get out of sleeping bag in case of attack so you can move. If bear leaves go out and see. Use bear spray if in close range. Does that sound right? Critique my response.

[Bonzo]

Critique my response.

Get the bear spray and/or firearm ready *before* you do anything else.  Then get out of the sleeping bag.  Then start talking.

[David Thomas]

Here’s BPLer Erin showing how it’s done, with a bear brown, way out on the Alaska Peninsula:

[John S.]

I hear ya Bonzo. Once the bear is gone, add 4) change underwear

[Bonzo]

Here’s BPLer Erin showing how it’s done, with a bear brown, way out on the Alaska Peninsula:

That’s a good example of everyone making Grown-Up Decisions.  Applause to ursids and hominids alike.

Once the bear is gone, add 4) change underwear

Maybe so… but the point is this: knowledge and situational awareness are both more potent weapons than bear spray and/or a firearm…and that axiom applies to both of the former during the employment of either of the latter.

tl;dr – something something ounce of preparation blah blah blah pound of cure.

[jscott]

All up and down the West Coast of the U.S….I don’t carry a gun or bear spray. And I certainly don’t worry about bears at night. I’ve encountered LOTS of brown bears (no grizzlies). In the Sierra certainly,  bears are familiar with people and seem to know the ground rules. If you don’t camp near people who are doing something stupid like hanging their entire pack filled with food in a tree next to them (and near you) my experience is that there won’t be any issues. I follow strict bear protocols and rest easy. No need for worry. In Wa, Or, Ca.

I wonder where the OP is hiking?

[Arthur]

I now hike mostly in AZ, UT, CO, WY. Black bears, snakes, and scorpions are high on the worry list, low on the reality list.

[Luke Schmidt]

Jscott just to be clear. You are seeing “Cinnamon” phase black bears. Technically a “brown bear” refers to a totally different species. We call them grizzllies in the Rockie, and brown bears in Europe  and coastal Alaska but basically the same. Seeing a grizzly/brown bear in CA or OR would be a big deal.

Back to precautions, this is why I like tarps and quilts. I can quickly roll out ready to use bear spray and I have good situational awareness. An enclosed tent means you are trapped, you can’t use bear spray and you can’t see what the bear is up to. Of course if mosquitoes are bad enough I just take my chances.  I don’t worry about it much. Camping after I got caribou blood all over myself was a bit nerve wracking but backpacking you should be fine.

[jscott]

Well, I typically don’t get a lot of caribou blood all over me in the Sierra. It wouldn’t occur to me to carry bear spray there or in the Cascades or the Olympics. Seeing a caribou there would be a big deal.

I don’t choose my shelter based on worries over attacking bears. What I’m trying to convey to the OP is, depending on where you’re hiking, worries about bears tend to be far worse than the bears themselves.

[Rex Sanders]

Decades old story from a reliable friend:

He was sleeping in the Sierra Nevada, inside a mesh-canopy tent without the rainfly. At one point he woke up to find a black bear staring at him, inches away from his face. He jumped and so did the bear, who then ran away.

He told the story to a ranger, who said that bears are curious about humans, and variations on that theme are not unusual.

=====

In black bear country, I store food properly, avoid stupid situations (hi baby bear, uh oh, where’s mama), and otherwise don’t give them a second thought.

One night, my wife and I were sleeping in a tent when a noisy bear came prowling. She woke me up and insisted that I do something.

I did – I rolled over and went back to sleep. She’s still mad at me.

— Rex

[Rex Sanders]

Scorpions

I spent much of my childhood running around the Mojave Desert, hearing terrible things about scorpions, but never seeing any.

In college, an entomology field trip took us to a small desert sand dune field at sunset. We carried a handful of ultraviolet hand lights, which cause scorpions to glow in the dark. After watching the dunes light up with scurrying scorpions, we all huddled around those lights.

But quickly learned that they’re not hunting humans. They are afraid of us, just like most creatures who weigh orders of magnitude less. We couldn’t get within 10 feet of them.

Another story: A friend lived for a while in a forest shelter – “shack” is too nice a word. She collected tiny bark scorpions from her home in an old mason jar. After a couple of years, the jar was almost full. She was never stung.

Tips: Don’t put bare body parts where you don’t look first. Be very careful in crusty old outhouses. Deserts, forests, rangeland – scorpions are everywhere.

— Rex

[Arthur]

i got hit by a bark scorpion by stupidly putting my hand in a neighbor’s pool skimmer helping him out. More painful than kidney stones for about 4 hours. Then my hand went numb for a few days. The bad part is that there was no redness or swelling, so I had no sympathy cards to play. Those little guys have my utmost respect now.

[Bruce Tolley]

+1 Luke

Yup our California bears while most often covered with brown fur are in the black bear family and have different behaviors than the brown bears.  Bob Gross who used to post here aptly compared the curiousity of the California black bear to that of a big dog.

We did have grizzlies once and there is one on the state flag.

[DWR D]

I’ve had black bears in the Sierra walking around and brushing up against my tent at night several times…. not a big deal as long as  you don’t have food in your tent…they are indeed like big dogs… but you don’t want to frighten one at close range as they could take a swipe at you before turning to run away… so just talk to them nice…

[Luke Schmidt]

Big dog is a good way to think of them.  Dogs can ruin your day but usually telegraph their intentions and don’t intentionally look for trouble. Same with bears. Common sense goes a long way.

I’m told the California grizzly was massive. To bad they are all gone.

[DWR D]

Two things I would add to my ‘big dog’ comment above…

Never try to take food away from a bear one he has it.

And most important: NEVER NEVER NEVER get close to bear cubs… moma is sure to be close by… no longer ‘just a big dog’…

DWR…

[jscott]

Yep, California grizzlies were the biggest of them all, apparently. Muir writes about them I believe. He first went into the Sierra working as a sheep herder. The bears would attack the penned in sheep at night. not much they could do. I can’t recall for sure if Muir referred to the bears as being Grizzlies but I think he did.

the Grizzlies were also down along the coast. all over, I think. this is all from dim memory, and my bear species identification skills are a bit wanting.

“California still has habitat that can sustain about 500 grizzlies.[15] In 2014, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service received and rejected a petition to reintroduce grizzly bears to California.”

Yeah, that’s OK. Wolves wandering in, yes. Grizzlies…no.  Well. maybe in Los Angeles. (a joke!!!I love LA.).)

[lisa r]

I’ve had plenty of black bear encounters on the trail and they’re always already moving in the other direction by the time I see them. They don’t want anything to do with us, unless they’ve become habituated and think we have good snacks, but that’s not something I worry about too much. (Grizzlies are another thing entirely, in my brain, which bums me out because it keeps me from feeling comfortable exploring in their territory, particularly as a small solo person.) I say I don’t worry about black bears too much, yet last year on a solo trip I had a nerve wracking experience.

At the end of a very long and stressful day of mostly off-trail bushwhacking I made camp in not the kind of place I like to camp, but deep, dark, spooky woods. Hadn’t seen signs of anyone in a day or two. I was already feeling a little spooked out but it was okay. I was reading and just about to turn off my light for the night when I sensed something outside. I was sitting up to take a listen when an animal pawed twice at my tent.

I had bear spray with me and a knife. Sometimes on solo trips I carry bear spray, not so much for bears but for general peace of mind. Anyway, I shouted into the dark ‘go away’ hoping to hear whatever it was crash off into the woods. I heard nothing. Rational brain told me this meant it wasn’t a bear, as in my experience a black bear would make a lot of noise running off from the sound. I figured it was probably something more like a curious raccoon or porcupine. But rational brain wasn’t in charge at the moment and I quickly realized that inside a tent bear spray is kind of useless. Spraying it through the mesh would definitely mean spraying myself, and I also wasn’t about to reach out and open up the fly door to peer into the night and see what was out there. So instead I just clutched the knife, tried to sleep,  periodically shouted ‘go away’ into the night until morning, and felt generally mortified with cowardice. Those woods were noisy. Deer or elk came crashing through at one point (but the sounds of their hooves is pretty easy to discern) and I’m pretty sure a large bird landed on the ground near the tent during the night.

Anyhoo, these days I feel more anxious about mountain lions than I’ve ever felt about black bears, though I don’t worry about mtn lions once I’m in the tent since I believe cats are visual hunters (I consider myself a mtn lion expert because I’m the mom to three vicious house cats).

[Bruce Tolley]

@ DWR

“Never try to take food away from a bear one he has it.

And most important: NEVER NEVER NEVER get close to bear cubs… moma is sure to be close by… no longer ‘just a big dog’…”

The Steven Herrero book Bear Attacks: Their Causes and Avoidance documents hundreds of brown and black bear attacks in Montana and lower Canada.  He distinguishes between defensive behaviors and aggressive behaviors in both black and brown bears.  Our California black bear of almost all the time only a threat or concern to humans when defending food they have claimed and when defending cubs.

Yup. Once in my my ignorant youth, I left the back hatch of my VW van open while unpacking the car around sunset at the Tuolumne Meadows campground. A bear came right up to the open hatch and started dining on the food which was still packed separately outside the packs. My girlfriend at the time suggested “charge the bear.”  Well being a guy, needless to say, I did take a few steps toward the bear. And the bear, aggressively defending the food that was now his, charged at me, moving rather quickly for such a large animal…..

[BlackHatGuy]

I asked this question a couple of years ago, there were quite a few answers (though many were off topic, as can be expected). You might find something interesting/helpful in that thread as well.

[Stumphges]

Here’s a fun video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAQZK5qjlOc

If I recall, in the comments it’s eventually revealed that dude had an empty smoothie cup (dinner) and a full smoothie (apparnetly meant for breakfast) in the tent. I think he eventually threw the full one toward the bear, off camera, allowing him to make his getaway. Car camping overnight gone wrong with yummy liquid meals, sans rainfly.

I’ve had black bears sniff around my ears when sleeping in a mesh tent. I prefer to keep the rainfly of mystery up when bears are around.

[David Thomas]

“Never take food from a bear . . . blah, blah, blah”.  Totally agree if it is a grizzly / brown bear.

But after having black bears get my backpacking food and being chased by black labs on my paper route as a kid, I decided around age 18 that I was a better actor than they were and wasn’t going to show any fear or concern.  I’ve since gotten black bears to drop a pack, a food bag and an Italian dry salami by throwing large rocks at them, hard, and yelling while running at them with a stout stick intent on how I was going to hit them when I got there, but they’ve always ran off before I could close the 100 feet between us.

That’s what worked for me in California.  Here in Alaska, black bears end as breakfast, lunch, and dinner as hash, fajitas, and stew, so we take a stealthier approach.

[Bonzo]

…and an Italian dry salami…

Oh, that’s grounds for war, right there.  You don’t steal someone’s salami; certain things just aren’t done.

[Author]

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