Welcome back to Grand Adventure! I'm your host Marc Guido, and in today's episode,
whether you're tent camping like this or you're traveling in an RV, we're going to
share how to safely camp in bear country, so stick around!
Bears have amazing memories. If they've eaten food from a human even once, they
will return to that area again and again looking for food.
Bears also become much more aggressive once they've obtained food somewhere, so
inevitably, contact with human-supplied food leads to the bear having to be
destroyed. There are things that you can practice as a good camper that will
protect both you and the bear. And sloppy campers, they not only endanger
themselves, they also endanger future campers. Now most of what we're going to
talk about today applies whether you're tent camping or in an RV. Bears could
tear into the side of a hard-sided RV or even a car if they smell food inside. As
a matter of fact, in places like Yosemite bears have even learned to peel open car
doors or open locked coolers if they smell food inside. And if you're in a
tent or a soft-sided RV like a pop-up tent camper or a hybrid, you need to be
extra vigilant. Now let's discuss for a moment the two
types of bears that are found in North America: the American black bear, and the
American brown bear, also known as a grizzly. We'll first talk about black
bears because they are the most widely ranging, and the most prevalent in the
country. They range up and down both the West Coast and the East Coast. They
travel as far south as the Florida Panhandle. Now contrary to their name and
popular perception, they're not always black.
Sometimes they're brown or even a blondish color. Adults can range anywhere
from around 90 pounds for a small female to nearly 300 pounds for a large adult
male. Usually when they have encounters with humans it's a result of food.
They have an amazing sense of smell. It's about seven times more powerful than a
domestic dog's sense of smell, and they can smell food from literally miles
away. Usually these encounters that have happened with humans, usually happen in a
place like a developed campground or something similar to that where they're
accustomed to being around humans and have learned
to associate humans with food. Generally speaking, a black bear will not attack a
human. It's usually a case of mistaken identity, when really all they're after is food. Now the much larger and much more
aggressive cousin to the American black bear is the American brown bear, or a
grizzly. Now, in the lower 48 there are about 1,500 grizzlies left and their range
has shrunk considerably over the last century or two. They now inhabit Montana,
parts of Idaho, Washington State, and Wyoming. Over half that population's
actually in Montana. In Canada they're across British Columbia and Alberta, and
of course there's a large population of brown bears in Alaska as well. Now brown
bears are distinguishable from black bears by a rather substantial hump just
behind their neck. Black bears don't have that hump. They have much larger
claws than black bears, and their bite is incredibly powerful. Their jaw can press
down over 1,000 PSI. It's been estimated that it's actually capable of
crushing a bowling ball. Encounters with humans, about 70 percent of the
encounters of grizzly bears with humans have occurred in situations where the
grizzly felt that they needed to defend their cubs. You don't want to ever be around
a grizzly at all really, but especially if there are cubs around.
Now because of a bear's incredible sense of smell, it's incredibly important to
keep your camping area clean. Not only are you endangering yourself, but
you're endangering future campers if you allow things like food particles to
remain on the ground. That's like a calling card for a bear. Make sure that
you stow all foodstuffs, or things that smell like foodstuffs -- that's not only
food, that's also grills, that's also things like sunscreens and toothpaste,
even those all smell like food to a bear. Now if you're in a campground with a
bear box, make sure that you store your food, your coolers, your grill and all
that stuff in the bear box. If a bear box is not available, keep it in your car and
your locked car some distance away from your tent or your camper. If you're in
the backcountry backpacking, tent camping, either use a bear canister or hang your
food. We'll show you how to do that here. First off, place all your food in a bag
along with any cooking utensils and equipment that may still hold the scent
of food. We keep a hundred feet of high tensile strength nylon cord bundled in
this small stuff sack, with one end of the cord attached to the stuff sack
itself. This allows us to hang the food up to 50 feet off the ground. After
removing and laying out the cord we put a few small rocks in the stuff sack to
give it some weight for throwing.
We then throw the stuff sack over a nearby branch. The higher off the ground,
the better, and keep it as far away from the tree trunk as possible because don't
forget, bears can climb trees.
Now we tie the stuff sack to our food bag before grabbing the loose end of our
100-foot line and pulling the food bag up into the tree. Finally we tie off the
food bag until morning, when we'll untie it and lower our food back to the ground.
Now it's equally important to keep your pets under your command at all times, and
also never unattended. If you do store your food inside your vehicle, cover it
up and keep it out of sight because in some areas, bears are smart enough
they've actually learned to associate the sight of coolers or even grocery
shopping bags with food. And you might want to rethink ... depending on how large
the bear population is in your area and what type of bear ... you might even want to
rethink barbecuing outside, or even roasting those marshmallows over the
campfire. Now when you're hiking in bear country, or even hanging around in camp,
keep a can of bear spray on hand. Avoid hiking during dusk and dawn,
because that's the time when bears are most active out looking for food, and
hike in large groups. Make sure that you make a lot of sound going down the trail
via calling out repeatedly, wearing a bear bell... and you may look like a freak
doing so, but even singing as you're going down the
trail. The reason being, what you're doing is you're alerting that bear to your
approach and giving the bear the opportunity to get the heck out of there
before you arrive. Now if you do encounter a bear, the most
important thing you can do is stand your ground. Make yourself look as huge as
humanly possible, and make as much noise as you possibly can. If necessary even
throw rocks in the direction of the bear, and use your bear spray if the bear does
in fact charge or attack. If your vehicle's nearby set off your car alarm,
or are carrying an air horn. The idea here is to make the encounter with the
human as unpleasant as possible, making the bear not want to repeat that ever
again. For your experience camping in bear country, that doesn't need to be an
unpleasant one. Some of the most spectacular camping in the entire
country is in bear country, and it would be an absolute shame for you to miss
those opportunities just out of concern for a chance encounter with a bear. We
hope that this video has been helpful to you. If you like this video, please give
us a thumbs up down below! And also down below you'll find the comments section
where we would love to hear from you and receive your suggestions on how to
safely camp in bear country. Now we put out new outdoor adventure
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