There's a bear in your camp, what do you do?

[BlackHatGuy]

In another thread, Ryan posted: “I woke up one morning and found lots of fresh (grizzly) bear tracks outside my shelter (a tent). Curious bear, roaming around camp.”

Since I’ve never had this happen, I’m curious what you would do if you’d woken up while the bear was roaming around outside your shelter and realized it was there. Nothing, just wait for it to leave? Yell at it to get the heck out of there? Yell and shine a light on it?

Would like to hear answers for both if you’re out alone, and if you’re out with one or two other people.

 

[Erica R]

If the bear is just roaming around, you can try and clap your hands real loud, mimicking a gunshot. If the bear has your food, just let them have it.

[Ken Thompson]

Black bears only

First in camp encounter:

SEKI 1989 Sleeping in our REI dome tent when at around 3am the tent is being pushed on. Like someone pushing on the poles. I wound up kicking back a bit while in my bag. I made impact with what turned out to be one of two cubs. The bear swatted back and sliced a two foot opening in the tent before running off. Spent the rest of the night in the car which luckily was right there

Second:

‘95ish Whitney Portal campground. Setting up camp. Just finished up putting up the tent and having a scotch. Notice a small bear heading for our pickup. Took no notice of us and reached in through the open window to access the package of tortillas on the front seat.  I swatted it on the behind with my trekking pole. Bear was pretty surprised when it backed out and there are four humans yelling at it. Impressive speedy retreat.

C:

Early Aughts, Lost Coast Trail. Group trip with a bunch of BPLrs. All obeying the rules about canisters except for That Guy with his Ursack.  We have our canisters down in a small gully just outside of camp. I hear some movement and see a bear shaped shadow passing my mid which is perched between a hillside and the gully with just a few feet of trail. Bear goes down and knocks the canisters a bit, no losses. Then the bear finds the Ursack tied not to a live tree, but a log instead. Come Morning and plenty of tracks but no Ursack or log. I stayed in bed the whole time.

I have been fortunate to see many black bears while out and about. Hope to see one next week.

I don’t think there is one right answer on what to do.

Stephen Herrero’s Bear Attacks Their Causes and Avoidance is a good read.

 

Fun fact: Most deadly animal in USA, White Tailed Deer.

 

[Matthew / BPL]

“Fun fact: Most deadly animal in USA, White Tailed Deer.”

How does that work? Does that number include when they come through the windshield?

[Kattt]

^^^ I would think so.

 

[MJ H]

It happens to often around here, I think it is worth revisiting the assumption that the deer’s part in the collision is accidental. They might be deer terrorists.

[Ken Thompson]

Driving to and from the trailhead is still the most dangerous part of the trip. Anybody else have a bear story?

[Kattt]

How about bringing a white flash trail camera and setting it up close to your shelter…. the bright light often startles animals away. I only use the IR types but a white flash camera could be a good idea….plus if you get eaten there will be footage ;)

[Ben C]

When I have seen bears in camp, twice that I remember, they were poking around looking for food.  They ran away as soon as they saw human movement and sound.  It really took no active scarring of the bears.

Kat, I like your implementation of the law of the hammer.  Couldn’t be executed any better.

[Bob Shuff]

Assuming you’ve secured your smellables in a bear can, properly hung bag, or ursack.  You awake to the commotion.  The bear presumably knows you are there from your smell.  I think that is all you can know at that point.

OP can correct me if I’m wrong, but the question is should you try to scare it away, or just hope that it gets what it was looking for or otherwise gets bored trying – in either case moves on?  Based on my book reading (no actual experience), it seems like trying to scare it away makes sense.  I’d be more likely to do that if there was others with me for a combined effort.

Maybe if you know about predatory bear activity in the area, and you are alone, it would change the analysis.  But in any case, you don’t want to go lying down in this circumstance – do you?

[BlackHatGuy]

“plus if you get eaten there will be footage”

True, but only Werner Herzog gets to view it….

[BlackHatGuy]

Thanks for the replies all.

[Kattt]

“True, but only Werner Herzog gets to view it…”

ha ha yes. And we get to watch his horrified look while he does and then declares that the footage must now be destroyed ..

[David Thomas]

Hitting a white tail with your car is bad.  Hitting a moose is (can be) worse.  I’ve, twice now, swerved or slowed enough to only nick them, but the baby sitter (in a financial / insurance sense) totaled the Corolla one night.  The car could, however, be driven away while the moose took a bullet from a trooper and fed several poor families.

Deadliest North American critters:
1) deer (200/year)
2) bee, wasp, hornet (54/year by bees)

3) dog (29/year)

4) cow (22/year)

5) horse

6) arthropods

7) rattlesnake

8) alligator

9) shark

10) bears

11) mountain lion

12) centipede

13) wolf

14) copperhead

15) coyote

16) coral snake.

In the 8.5 years of the 2010’s, in the US, bear deaths have averaged 2/year.  By species: 6 by black bear (half in Alaska), 10 by brown bears (30% in Alaska), and none by polar bear (the last one was in Alaska in 1990).

Amusingly, in over a century (1880-1989), all 4 US human fatalities by polar bears were because people climbed over the fence in zoos.

And in the early 20th century, most reports of death from black bears include “zoo” or “road-side attraction”

[W I S N E R !]

I’ve had a lot of black bear encounters in my local mountains Doug, strangely never in the Sierra though.

I was awakened to a bear trying to stick it’s nose under my pyramid wall while sniffing around….I yelled “GET!!!” and it ran away.  I could hear it fall over itself in the process, probably more scared of me than I of it…though I was pretty freaked by how close it got.

During last deer hunting season I was hunkered down on a hillside watching a smallish canyon before sunrise.  A bear was traversing the same hillside, not knowing I was there.  I didn’t want to give up a hard earned spot but I could see that it was going to come right past me…So I had to yell it off and move to another canyon (and accept the morning was pretty much busted).

On another occasion I heard one lurking around my camp around midnight, got up, and caught it’s eyes in my headlamp.  I yelled it off, it ran away.  45 minutes later I could hear it coming back.  I yelled again, it ran away.  The third time this happened I said F it and packed my camp in the night and left for another canyon a mile or two over.

Generally I’ve never had the slightest trouble yelling one off….but the last encounter I mention was the only one that really bothered me as I was getting concerned that it was being way too persistent.

[BC Bob]

“….Noise in the night can cautiously be investigated by using a flashlight. A marauding black bear can usually be chased away by making noise, such as by shouting or by banging pots. An exploratory grizzly should not be provoked in this or any other manner….”

Herrero, Stephen. Bear Attacks: Their Causes and Avoidance (Kindle Locations 2641-2642). McClelland & Stewart. Kindle Edition.

[David Thomas]

As an inexperienced, 17-year-old backpacker in King’s Canyon, we had one come into our camp and we were scared to do anything.  “What if it charges us?” so we lay in our sleeping bags listening to it tear into a pack and scarf our food.  It was the 1970’s so we had a can of Grape Wyler’s drink mix.  We KNEW as soon as it got to that because of the strong grape-flavor smell from 15 feet away.  Grape drink mix and bear saliva leave a pack pretty nasty.  We dunked it in the river repeatedly to get it mostly clean.

Later that night, it came back and I yelled and banged my Sierra cup.  It left and my friend woke up, asking “how close was it” and I replied, “See that paw print 9 inches from your head?”

That was last time I took any crap from a black bear.

Like Craig, I’ve been yelling at black bears to leave for 35 years now and it’s always worked (YMMV) although where they are very habituated, if they don’t respond to yelling, then I escalate to throwing fist-sized rocks as hard as I can at their rump and/or grabbing a stout stick and running/yelling at them, stick over my head, intent in my mind on bashing them with the stick when I get to them.  They’re always long gone before I’ve traversed the 10-20 yards although they have this momentarily look of surprise like, “This human is different from most of them”.

The last three black bears I’ve met in the woods were quite tasty as stew.  The trick is get a spring bear when they’re eating grass and not in the fall when they are eating fish.

[Valerie E]

“Driving to and from the trailhead is still the most dangerous part of the trip.”

Amen to THAT, brothah!  That’s the part that terrifies me.

The only time I had a bear in camp was several years ago at Upper Rae Lake.  All our smellies were in a bear locker.  I slept though it, but my husband told me that he heard the sound of heavy “footsteps” nearby in the middle of the night, which he assumed to be a bear.  In the morning, when I went to brush my teeth, I saw a large pile of very fresh bear poop about 10 yards from our tent.  It had not been there the previous day.  I think he/she was just out walking around, enjoying the quiet…

[James Marco]

Over the years, I have had many bear encounters. Making loud noises, and/or looking big to black bears works best. My toddler daughter played with a bear cub while I stood on one side and the mother bear sat eating leaves on the other side. Yup, I was a bit worried. I have had them pass through camp, between the campfire and my tent. They are not especially afraid of a campfire. I have had encounters on the trail…ummm, three or four times I believe. I have had them sniffing around my tent at night. I have had bears milling around my food bag. As wild animals they are attracted to smells and non-intimidating new stuff in their vicinity. They are basically lazy and not willing to fight you over possible benefits. IFF they *have* food, be it a berry patch or on the trail, go WAY around.

They will defend food if they have it. At a campsite, a bear broke into a cooler and was not intimidated by the people banging pans (three people making noise.) I threw a piece of firewood at him and he finally grabbed a bag of hotdogs in his snout and walked off as he watched us, swiveling his head trying to watch his direction of travel and us at the same time. This was Lewey Lake in the ADK’s (near Indian Lake.) He was a typical garbage bear and was well used to people. I think this was 35 years ago. He would have attacked someone if we had tried to shoo him away from the food. He got some and left. Typically, about 5-6 bears would wander through every day. Generally you could not leave food alone, a bear would steal it. I left a pound of bacon out along with eggs one morning and walked two campsites down for some coffee water. Yup, a bear stole the bacon. Pesty critters… and fast.

[Tom K]

So much depends on the bear and the location of the encounter.  My experiences, going back to 1974, all with black bears in the Sierra, break down into two general categories:  Habituated bears, along the JMT, and unhabituated bears in far more less frequented areas.  My first experience with a habituated bear was a yearling on his own for the first time.  I was also on my first real Sierra backpacking trip, 17 days in the Upper Kern Basin, and pretty much clueless about dealing with bears.  At the end of our second day we were totally beat and set up camp at Wright Creek, right at timberline, 11,200′.  It was dusk and I decided it was more important to set up the tent and cook dinner than to hang our food, “reasoning” that there wouldn’t be any bears that high.  Sure enough, in the middle of the night I heard a sickening rrriiiiippp and bolted out of the tent to find a yearling bear extracting a packet of food from the bottom compartment of my pack.  I banged on a pan, threw a couple of rocks, and bellowed at the top of my lungs.  To my relief he bolted, but not before he had snarfed down my prized Syrian apricot paste.  Fortunately, that was not essential to the trip,and we went on to have a glorious time.  My second experience with a habituated bear was at Vidette Meadows 5 years later.  This time I came prepared, and was carrying a goodly quantity of firecrackers, the kind that come woven into a packet/string.  I had undone one of the packets so that I had about 20 or so of them loose in a baggie and ready to go, along with an intact string.  This time I hung my food.  In the middle of the night I heard the food bag hit the ground with a “THUD”.  I bolted out of the tent with my firecrackers, a Bic lighter, and my flashlight gripped between my teeth to confront a very large bear who was lying down with my food bag cradled between his front paws.  I lit a firecracker and tossed it at his feet from about 20′ away.  The flash bang surprised him, and I followed with several more in quick succession, as he got to his feet and then began to back away.  Finally, I had advanced to the food bag and he was pacing back and forth about 30 or so feet away, growling and weaving his head back and forth.  It was pretty clear he was getting ready to rip me a new one, so, in desperation, I pulled the intact string of firecrackers out of my baggie, lit it, and flung it at him.  The continuous series of flash bangs spooked him, and he backed off a hundred feet or so.  I yelled to my buddy to get a fire started, and that was how it ended.  We spelled each other keeping the fire going until dawn, and he eventually left.  I hope never to repeat that experience, because it clearly could have ended otherwise.  That was my last encounter with a habituated bear.  I learned a couple of important things from those two incidents:  Be careful about packing odiferous foods like chocolate or sweetened fruit, both of which the second bear extracted from my trail mix bag, leaving the main part of my food intact, thereby saving the trip, as was the case with the first bear;  Avoid popular areas, where habituated bears are a given.  Later, I also decided to avoid sleeping in the same area where I eat when passing through popular areas, and to go no cook, which also cuts down on odors.  In short, it is far better to avoid attracting a bear than to have to deal with him/her once they show up.  In the intervening 39 years, I have seen a total of five bears in widely separated, but remote areas, and never around camp.  Four out of the five couldn’t get the he!!out of dodge fast enough, and the fifth, as I was descending into Kern Canyon at Upper Funston Meadow, was so fat that it could have cared less about me as it waddled on its way in the direction of Kern Hot Springs, probably to harass the campers there for amusement.  Nowadays, canisters are a very effective way, if bulky and heavy, to keep bears from getting your food, but they don’t prevent the hassles that ensue because you have attracted a bear into camp by poor odor management and campsite selection.  Evasion, evasion, and more evasion is the name of the game, IMO/IME.  FWIW

[Jenny A]

About 7-8 years ago, a group of 6 of us kayaked to the SE end of Yellowstone Lake for a fishing trip.  The first thing we saw when we pulled the boats onto shore at the campsite were large fresh grizzly tracks along the beach.  Gulp.  The campsite was quite tight, not very much space between food storage area, tent area, and kitchen.  The first night there, we heard the chain on the food cabinet rattling.  None of us slept well, and we were too scared to go investigate, knowing that the bear wasn’t going to get the food and hoping like hell that no one had tucked a snack into their tent.  I spent that night and the following 2 nights with my bear spray in hand in the sleeping bag, but to our knowledge the bear did not return.  Nothing like NOT being the top of the food chain to sharpen one’s senses!

[Paul Wagner]

Too many black bear stories to count.  There’s a huge difference between habituated bears and wild bears.  Wild bears have always run away when they saw us.  Habituated bears have ruined the sunroof on iur Volvo wagon, and entered a camp “protected” by five people and a dog making lots of noise…

But the OP was about a grizzly bear.  I would think you’d want to know ow what kind of bear you’re dealing with before taking any action…

 

[d k]

James, I would love to hear more details about your toddler daughter and the bear cub.  That sounds like a very interesting story.  Simultaneously hair raising, and kind of cool – at least from here.  I can only imagine how you must have felt.

[James Marco]

dk, Not a big deal. There were a couple pair of mama’s & cubs around. (Again, this was Lewey Lake a while ago.) We were strolling over to the bathroom. (At the time, there was one bathroom for 10 campers in a loop.) I set Brenda(my daughter) down to let her walk and really wasn’t watching ahead of me all that well. There was a small dip between a couple large rocks where we had to follow along the top ridge. She decided to walk over to the dip and promptly sat with a thump. Then I saw the baby bear.
My first reaction was to go get her, of course, because even a little cub can hurt a child. But she picked up a handful of forest duff and started to look at it, ignoring the bear. So, I just let her sit. The cub was poking through some raspberry plants, pretty much ignoring us, but he had his eye on us. He finished eating a berry and walked the three or four steps over to Brenda. As he was walking, with me preparing to shoo him, I became aware of the Mama. This was what I had feared, initially. Cubs mean Mama. Mama is BIG.
The cub was not at all acting threatening. A few yards away, less than 5, the Mama bear just sat, watching. I could not ignore the fact that I *knew* she was not being aggressive. Nor, was she intimidated. She just started looking over the berries and keeping an eye on her cub. The cub, by now had reached Brenda and was sniffing her face. Brenda laughed at him. I would guess he sort of tickled her. He sat and sniffed her foot, and of course she moved her foot away. He sniffed her other foot (she was barefoot, of course) and she pulled that one back and promptly fell over as kids will do. The cub jumped back and rolled over. I looked at the Mama, and could see a BIG GRIN on her face. I couldn’t contain my laughter, and walked over and picked her up. I looked back at the Mama and she was casually picking a berry, looked like she was eating a leaf. The cub, recovered and just sat there, less than 2 feet away. I hoisted Brenda onto my shoulders (her usual way to be carried) and walked down to the bathroom, ending the encounter. The bear and the cub were not intimidated nor were they even bothered. It was pretty clear the Mama bear thought the whole incident was humorous, something tickled her fancy.
To this day I tell her she was playing with a wild bear cub before she could properly walk.
Of course, I was more interested in keeping her safe, but knew any action towards Brenda/the cub would upset Mama. Once he rolled down the hill, I could retrieve her, not that she was more than a footstep away. I had ample opportunity to attack the bears and the bears had ample opportunity to attack me. Of course, my heart was thumping… The grin on Mama’s face said there wasn’t any problem.

[d k]

Thanks, James – I love that story.  Just two parents and their kids.  It’s pretty much the warm fuzzy version I had in my head reading your first post, but I figured I was being too idealistic – ha!

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