Bear outside my tent

Bear wise I’ve seen brown bears  flee (usually smaller ones) or just amble on (bigger) while hiking.  It’s a lot different in a tent. You’re on your pad ready to go asleep then there’s a noise getting louder.  Then it brushes the tent if puts a claw under the edge.

Happened to me on a Maroon Bells hike (a mama bear and her cubs had been habituated) in a Tarptent and I just yelled .. it was probably the cub.   It did the job but thinking if a pyramid tarp with just perimeter netting being best (chances are mosquitoes will be the main thing making a camp miserable).

Warthing the video it remind me of several writings not to have an obnoxiously colored tent in bear country.   They can get curious ..

The last time I ever cowboy camped I woke up to a mountain goat coming in to lick salts from my face. I have zero fear of goats, and actively chase them away all the time, but that’s one terrible way to come out of a deep sleep. LOL

Even worse is that I thought the stubborn jerk goat came back into my camp and I jumped out of my bag to chase him off, only to realize it was a gigantic black bear. I still chased it off, but that sure made it hard to sleep any more after that. :)

Edit: Quick story about animals outside tents. I was in a deep part of the Olympic Mountains camped on top of a ridge in a stand of trees. There were some people in a really small tent camping a few hundred feet down slope from my in a meadow. I got up early way before sunrise, but just light enough out to see the other tent. Two mountain goats came running out of nowhere and started going full-out battle royale mode on each other, jumping and rolling all over the place going at each other for fun. The two goats rolled over the tent and smashed it down across the whole thing. They then freaked out and booked it into the woods and disappeared. About 10 seconds later, two terrified people came poking their heads out of their messed up tent, having just been woken up to two large animals rolling on top of them and then bolting away. LOL I’m pretty sure the people must have heard me laughing.

No big bears in Oz, but in some of the edges of the NP wilderness where there used to a farm or two there are some remnant cows – and bulls. We (Sue & I) were camped in one such place where there was nice short grass – which in hindsight should have said ‘grazing animals’ to us. A young bull turned up. OK, ignore.

But then he got stroppy, started bellowing, pawing the ground and dropping his head. That suggested that he might try to charge us. Not a good idea. Well, I was not going to have that! So I scooped up a dead 2″ branch and charged him. He was not sure about that: he was only a herbivore after all, so I started yelling at him as I charged. That worried him.

But what made him turn tail and flee was my yelling very enthusiastically at him the phrase ‘Scotch Fillets, Scotch Fillets’.

When I got back to my wife she was on her back laughing her head off. Oh well.

Cheers

We need an entire thread on close encounters of the bovine kind.

— Rex

Mmmoooo!

This whole thread is misnamed. Once the bear enters the campsite it is not “outside your tent.” You are in the bears tent. You should probably leave quickly…

Once the bear enters the campsite it is not “outside your tent.” You are in the bears tent. You should probably leave quickly…

Not in the Sierra. Bears are commonplace. They come into campsites, looking for food left out. If there’s nothing to be had they move on.

If I had to move every time a bear came into a campsite…it would be ridiculous. Follow best practices and there’s nothing to worry about. And anyway, there have been tons of times that a bear’s been in my campsite when I’m in my tent, and I’m not aware of it. They’re very stealthy.

“We need an entire thread on close encounters of the bovine kind.”

I’ve got a fun story from when I was in Ireland. I’ll tell it around the campfire one of these days.

Jscott I was joking. I give bears the respect they deserve but I don’t hesitate to run them off. A few surprises and scares but not bad experiences yet.