Home Invasion by Bear

ok, and i am supposed to sleep well in my tent; all alone on my first solo trip!?!? no problem!

http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/7795684p-7709118c.html

has anyone, firsthand, had a bear encounter while sleeping in your tent or in a shelter you would like to share? What happened, what'd you do to scare it away, why you think it happened?

the starchild said:

ok, and i am supposed to sleep well in my tent; all alone on my first solo trip!?!? no problem!

http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/7795684p-7709118c.html

has anyone, firsthand, had a bear encounter while sleeping in your tent or in a shelter you would like to share? What happened, what'd you do to scare it away, why you think it happened?

Click to expand...

Last summer, sleeping in my hammock back in the woods at a remote location near Lower Saranac Lake. I wake up at around midnight to the sound of sticks breaking with footsteps and a strange noise nearby, maybe 30 yards away. It was an odd sound, I thought most like a cross between a snort (but not at all like a deer snort) and that of a cat hissing when it is angry. Yeah, a cat. I'm not saying what it was, I just don't know any better way to describe the noise it made. It had to be big because I could hear twigs breaking with it's steps. As long as I heard it, it didn't approach much closer but moved on in a partial arc around me at about the same distance.

I usually have a small digital audio recorder with me that I use for journaling and recording frogs and birds. On this particular night of all nights I didn't bring it into the hammock with me. Otherwise it easily would have picked up the sounds. So what did I do? I listened to it for a while with interest until I fell back to sleep as it began to rain (it had been a very tiring few days to that point in my trek). I guess it must have moved on 'cuz I'm still here.

We hadn't gone to sleep yet, but we were all in the shelter at some lake south of the Flowed Lands when we heard our bear bag hit the ground, then start moving away from us at high speed. One of the clever Daks bears had gotten to our (admittedly not perfect) bear line and was trying to abscond with it.

Without much thought (clearly) a few in our group ran after the bear, yelling and banging hiking poles. The bear dropped the food and took off, and we recovered nearly all of it. Except for Ed's nuts. The bear hung around for another 30+ minutes, occasionally snorting and keeping any eye on us from the woods, before moving on to the next campsite where he got his food and took off. This bear hits all these sites every night, apparently.

This happened due to inadequate bear bagging in an extremely high problem bear feeding area. The best solution there would be a bear canister, and I believe they are now required.

-dave-

David Metsky said:

Except for Ed's nuts. -dave-

Click to expand...

Sure, toy with me!

Indeed they are required in the Eastern High Peaks. A couple of years before that requirement was in place we camped at the CG by the Colden Dam. Prime bear territory, of course. A ranger we spoke with on the way in told us how serious the problem was, that the site WILL be visited by bears at night, and that we should hang our food 1/8 to 1/4 mile away. We did, and suffered only a tiny hole from a squirrel that surgically extracted what he wanted (nuts), but most food was intact. Bears visited that night, and were greeted by the usual pot-banging from a group in the leanto. The second night the CG was again visited, and it was wandering among our tents. We could see its shadow on the tent from the lights that people were shining on it. Come morning, the only evidence that it had been there was that our water filter we had hung in the tree was on the ground. A bear that night had knocked over one of the trees in an attempt to get at the second one with the bear tie. Frustrated, it must have given up and our food was safe. BTW, that CG, though geographically beautiful, was literally a trash dump. We haven't been back there since, and we wonder what condition it's in now.

Dick

Another Alaska story: not really an encounter, but memorable for me.

We got into Denali Park before the road opened and we'd been hiking for days, always careful to leave all food and cookware at least 100m downwind whenever we stopped for the night. But this day we were in the middle of a glacier and the landscape was absolutely lunar - not so much as a blade of grass for many miles around. We figured there was no need to move the food away.

Well, next morning we walked a little further uphill, and there right along our route were the biggest grizzly tracks we'd ever seen. We followed those tracks the rest of the day - the bear obviously knew the way over the pass better than we did.

We never slacked on food discipline again.

Did encounter a couple of grizzlies later on in the trip, but not while camped, and kept our distance.

Many years ago I was at one of the Calamity Brook lean-tos. Someone had hung a bear bag perhaps 10 feet off the ground right next to the other Calamity Brook lean-to, but there was no one at that other lean-to. I didn't even realize the bear bag was there until the middle of the night when I first heard the bear going at the low hanging bear bag, and then saw him with the help of my flashlight. I sat there watching the bear finish his snack, then he just wandered off -- didn't bother me at all...

the starchild said:

ok, and i am supposed to sleep well in my tent; all alone on my first solo trip!?!? no problem!

http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/7795684p-7709118c.html

has anyone, firsthand, had a bear encounter while sleeping in your tent or in a shelter you would like to share? What happened, what'd you do to scare it away, why you think it happened?

Click to expand...

My neighborhood is surrounded by National Forest so we do get a fair amount of bears in the area. One morrning I heard a commotion on my deck and was irritated by seeing a bear. I stepped out, clapped my hands, yelling" Go Home". I must be scary because the bear ran off. The Fish and Game have told me the reason the bears come back is because a neighbor puts out more than 15 bird feeders. Since it is unlawful to feed bears or do anything to attract bears, they will come out to talk to him because there are hiking trails that are a hundred yards away and this could be dangerous to a hiker crossing the bear's path to the bird feeder. One bear actually broke into a homeowners house hoping to get a fresh baked pie. F&G recommend putting in feeders from April 1st to Dec 1st. I'm not sure if pie baking is prohibited during those dates.

Speaking of bear home invasions: try these shots

Keep this in mind when you hang your food.

-dave-

bear home invasions

Speaking of bear home invasions: try these shots

Keep this in mind when you hang your food.

-dave-


Some people may think they can outsmart the bears, but as your pictures show, they are unrelenting. Please help pass the word about keeping bird feeders in until Dec. 1st

skibones said:

Please help pass the word about keeping bird feeders in until Dec. 1st

Click to expand...

I've abandoned feeding birds for the birds sake as well as the squirrels and bear. I have beefed up my bird house count, which I think is more interesting and better for the birds.

David Metsky said:

Speaking of bear home invasions: try these shots

Keep this in mind when you hang your food.

-dave-

Click to expand...

Great pics, Dave! I'll have to hang onto this link for the next time someone tells me he can hang a bear bag that no bear will be able to get!

Last September, I took a week off of work and was camped out. It was after Labor Day so the campsite was all mine. I got back to the campsite after dark and started a fire and just relaxed. I heard some noise from an adjacent site, but remembered that one other person was staying on the campground, and I had seen them at that site the previous night.
Around midnight, I put out the fire, and headed into the tent to sleep. At about three in the morning, I woke up to "find a tree". I got out of my tent and walked over to a nearby tree. I heard a noise behind me, which was on the other side of the tent. I flashed my light on two eyes looking at me, then I saw the rest of the profile of a bear. I ducked back into the tent and found my car key (this is not a recommendation on what to do). I then stepped back out of the tent. The bear was just looking at me. I just made myself look big and yelled. He then walked a ways toward the water, while I walked towards my car. I spent the rest of the night in the car. Next day, I looked at the other campsite and saw that nobody was there. It must have been the bear scrounging up some leftovers of that site.

Anyway, I didn't feel threatened. Just very foggy at three o'clock am. And that bear didn't have either a Labatts OR a coffee for me. Cheapskate!!