Follow
If you are travelling in bear country follow these ten ways to avoid bears:
- Keep your cooking areas and sleeping areas separate (100 yards or so is the rule of thumb).
- Hang food and items with strong odors (ie, toothpaste, bug repellent, soap, etc.) at least 10 ft above the ground or use airtight, bear-proof containers.
- Don’t wear clothing with cooking or food odors to bed.
- Be clean – wash dishes, and people in the cooking area well away from the sleeping area..
- Don’t surprise bears while hiking, make some noise! Talk, sing or shout especially when close to rivers or streams whose sound may mask your approach.
- Travel on established trails.
- Travel in a group of three or more.
- Travel during daylight hours, avoid dawn and dusk when bears are most active.
- Look for tracks, scat and signs of bear activity.
- Be prepared! Study the facts and train your group before you go.
I’ve seen big grizzly bears in the Alaskan wild. I’ve been uncomfortably close to Kodiak bears (grizzly or brown bears) on a mountaintop on the island that gives them their name. They are magnificent, dangerous creatures.
I’ve caught rare glances of black bears in the forests of Pennsylvania but I’ve encountered their tracks and signs much more often.
Just spotting a bear in the wild is uncommon, bear attacks are even rarer and injuries or fatalities from attacks are rarer still. Most bear attacks are usually attributable to human error rather than inherently aggressive bears.
Center for Wildlife Information
There are two kinds of bears in North America:
Black bears have taller ears, no visible shoulder hump and a straight face profile.
Grizzly bears are typically medium to dark brown but some are nearly black to light blonde, they have a shoulder hump, a ‘dished’ profile (there’s a depression between the eyes and the end of nose), and short, round ears.
Tracks of grizzly and black bears are differentiated by examining the placement of the smallest toe as described above.
Should you encounter a bear:
- Stay calm, avoid sudden movements.
- Keep your distance, don’t attempt to get closer to any bear
- If the bear doesn’t see you get its attention talk in a normal voice, don’t keep quiet.
- Never feed bears.
As with any risk we encounter while camping knowing the facts and applying preventative measures to mitigate risks is a reliable way to stay safe.
Author Stephen Herrero’s (doctor of animal behavior and ecology) book Bear Attacks: Their Causes and Avoidance has been described as the authoritative work on the topic.
Hi Clarke,
Where I come from there are only two bears to contend with, one is the koala, the other is the drop bear, so reading you avoiding bears I had to laugh. But seriously I have a question that I hope some one can answer
“If the bear doesn’t see you get its attention talk in a normal voice, don’t keep quiet.”, my question is Why???. If the bear hasn’t seen you then it would probably move away with bothering you if you just stood still
The key is to avoid surprising or startling a bear. If you find yourself in a situation where you can see a bear the safe assumption is that he will see or, more likely, smell you sooner than later. So talking is a way of letting the bear know you are there, that you are a human being. If you wait for the bear to notice you, or quietly sneak away it’s more likely that you will startle the bear somewhere down the trail.
Hi Clarke,
You forgot the most important way to identify and tell the two kinds of bears apart. That is by their SCAT.
Now, the black bear’s scat is full of berries, grass and a few bones of small rodents.
The Grizzly’s scat is full of small bells and smells of pepper spray.
I just had to do this…