Check out WTIP North Shore Radio’s, “Pack & Paddle,” featuring Scott from Bull Moose Patrol for wilderness tips you can use on your next outdoor adventure!
Listen as Scott chats with North Shore Radio host, Mark Abrahamson, about how to camp safely in bear country.
Pack & Paddle: Camping with Bears Transcript
0:00:00.2 Mark: WTIP's new feature, Pack and Paddle, with Scott Oeth, is up next. Scott is a registered Maine Guide, an Eagle Scout, and Minnesota Master Naturalist. He's an instructor for the Okpik National Cold Weather Leader School. He joins us now by phone to talk about bears. Welcome, Scott.
0:00:17.7 Scott Oeth: Good morning, Mark.
0:00:18.8 Mark: Yeah, the very thing was in the news the last week or so here.
0:00:22.9 SO: Yeah, yeah, bears have been popping up. Very tragically, a fatal bear attack, and a large bear shot. Hunting season is upon us, and it's that time of year, so the bears are out foraging and getting ready for winter, so it is a topic that's coming to people's mind.
0:00:37.4 Mark: Well, it's definitely something we think about just living on the North Shore, and what we can do with our properties to protect ourself. Talk about camping.
0:00:45.3 SO: Yeah, I think camping, first of all, one of the things I like to try to talk to people about if we're getting ready to go on a trip, I'm taking a group to the Boundary Waters, backpacking on the Superior Hiking Trail, or anywhere thereabouts, is what are the actual risk and the things we need to think about with bears. And I think, especially if someone's not very familiar or comfortable in bear country, doesn't have a lot of experience there, a bear attack is what's coming to their mind. They don't wanna be eaten by a bear. No-one does. That's a very scary thought, but it turns out that that is an incredibly, incredibly rare circumstance. It does happen, it is something we wanna think about a bit, but it shouldn't be a primary worry or concern. Driving to and from the event is probably much more risky than sleeping out in bear country. But bears getting your food and bears rummaging your campsite looking for food, that is a problem. It's a nuisance. It could have you be hungry, it could destroy your gear, and it could actually lead to a dangerous encounter if a bear comes into your site looking for food. So I'm usually trying to talk to people about keeping camp clean, prevention, awareness, and it would be neat to see a bear. I like seeing bears in the woods, but just on our own friendly terms.
0:01:58.3 Mark: Now, talk about some specific things. There are some things that I've done when I'm camping with food packs, and not taking food into my tent, things like that. Talk about those kinds of things with food.
0:02:10.4 SO: Yeah, absolutely. I think there's a whole range of things that you can do to try and minimize it. So food, first of all, you can think about what you're eating. So if this is a big concern, and I'm gonna be talking mostly about black bears, what we have here in Minnesota and our territory. Getting into grizzly country, that's a different issue. I've done a fair amount of backpacking in grizzly country, and take some more advanced steps there, but understanding where you're at. It's interesting, I've done a lot of trips in Northern Maine. They have a very large bear population, according to the Department of Natural Resources, probably larger than Minnesota's, but I've never heard anyone having any bear issues in Maine, versus Minnesota, where bears and thinking about bears and food and camp is a big deal. This is 'cause our bears are habituated. We have a lot more people going to these sites, a lot more regularly, and the bears associate those camp sites with a dinner bell and with food.
0:03:00.0 SO: And so if you are in an area, knowing that bears may be coming around, keeping your campsite very clean, sometimes I like to not even cook in camp. Do that down the trail or up the river on a different lake, if you think it's really a high bear area, to keep those food smells away from camp. You can think about the food that you're eating. We all love to fry fish and bacon, but those are awfully smelly foods. Maybe you wanna eat something that's a little more dry and less scented. And a big one is keeping food out of your tent, storing it in a separate area. The classic advice is to hang it, and there's different methods, and hanging works well. I've never had a problem with a bear when hanging food, but it's not necessarily easy to find the perfect tree, or if you have a big load of food for a group at the beginning of a trip to get it up there. And there's getting to be sort of a growing thought among some really experienced outdoors people that hanging might not be the best way. Using scent [0:03:57.3] ____ containers, bear-proof hard-sided containers, and storing the food outside of camp, hiding it off of the main trail, a ways away, and some folks are doing that now, but don't store it, don't leave it laying around in camp is the short story.
0:04:13.1 Mark: Now, if you are gonna hang, how many feet are you talking about?
0:04:20.1 SO: Well, bears can climb trees very well, they can climb out on branches, they can kamikaze from higher up on a tree down onto a food pack. They're pretty tall and they can reach. So you really want it at least eight... More like 10 or 12 feet off the ground. There's a school of thought that says if the food is hanging more than three feet above the bear's top height, they can't smell it. I'm not sure if that's true or not, but it seems to make sense that the higher the better, and you want it well away from the branch. And so do some homework if that's gonna be your game plan for hanging the food, because the classic diagram shows, "Find a convenient branch, toss your rope up around there, and pull your food up to it." It's not always that easy to find that perfect branch.
0:05:01.8 SO: So oftentimes, you're trying to think about how to rig the line between two trees high enough up, or I've had situations... Like I was in the Cascades, in the Pacific Northwest, where there's no branches for 50 feet up. So we've had to affix a line high enough on a tree and then pull it out diagonally and get a lot of tension on that line and to hoist up to that. And so there's different methods in terms of hanging, and I think it's worth, if you don't do this often, go ahead and print off those diagrams, put them in a Ziploc bag along with your rope, and strongly consider bringing along a small pulley. That can really help hoisting, especially a group's load, makes it a lot easier. I know one group I've traveled with in Algonquin in Canada and they have a baseball with a eye screw in it to use to throw the rope up over a branch. It makes it a lot easier than trying to tie a rock into a rope.
0:05:51.9 Mark: Alright. Now, so I've dealt with my food in a correct fashion. What do I do if a bear comes into my camp site and/or I meet one on a trail up here, with our black bears?
0:06:03.6 SO: I think if you meet one on a trail, that's hopefully a little easier. My best advice would be, what I would do is observe but back away and try just not to disturb it. If the bear is facing you, it does seem to be that there's a significant difference in bear encounters with black bears if the bear is surprised, the defensive type nature, and the close encounter thing, the bear may get defensive. Maybe its kids are nearby, or it was eating, or it's surprised, and that can initiate some type of bear attack or encounter where it's more trying to scare you away and defend its territory. But what you wanna watch out for, from my reading and studying different cases, is the perditious bear, a bear that's starving, a bear that's wounded, a bear that's deranged, a bear that is actually in a predatory mode. And if you see a bear like that on the trail, the best advice, best thing is you wanna make yourself large, you stick together as a group, you do not run. You don't ever wanna run from a bear, maybe back away, but make yourself appear to be large and threatening. And if that perditious bear attacks, fight back with everything you have, rocks, sticks, knife; bear spray, ideally if you have it, would be a good option.
0:07:22.5 Mark: Alright, one last question. So camping on an island does not necessarily protect you from bears, right?
0:07:30.6 SO: No, no, it doesn't. It might feel better psychologically, but bears can swim and bears can, yeah, they can absolutely get out to the island, and if they know that…that's where the bacon is being cooked, and that's a regular site or maybe... I think islands that are popular, especially with fishermen, there might be fish guts and fish being fried regularly, the bear might like that island, for sure.
0:07:51.7 Mark: It's part of its routine. We're talking with Scott Oeth. You can follow his adventures at www.bullmoosepatrol.com. Scott, this is great talking to you today. Anything else you wanna add this morning?
0:08:05.2 SO: No, maybe just quickly, seeing a bear is a treat in the wild, and generally, nothing to be scared of, but I do think it makes sense to spend a little bit of time studying ahead before you head into bear country, about how you're traveling, how you're storing your food, and what to do if you see one.
0:08:20.5 Mark: Thank you very much. I'm glad we could talk to you every month.
0:08:23.0 SO: Yeah, thanks, Mark. This was great. I appreciate it.