Do You Sleep With Your Food in Bear Country?

[Buglebrush]

I sleep with my food, but am very careful about keeping everything clean and food sealed into airtight plastic. I eat away from where I sleep, and stay clean of food. I always put my food by my feet.

 

[eddielasvegas]

I've often wondered about this and this thread seems like a good as a place as any to pose this question.

Given a bear's unmatched olfactory senses (7x better than a Bloodhound), I wonder how much safer it keeps you taking the recommended precautions (cooking away from your camp, hanging food high, etc.)?

When you cook, your cloths will be covered in food odors. Maybe even your tent.

Plan A for a bear is your hang'em high food cache, but maybe their nose leads them to plan B, which is you since your clothes will be covered in food odors.

Anyone have any thoughts or experience with this?


Eddie

 

[Kyle Hamilton]

Brown bear country solo hunts, shitty weather day, you’ll catch me cooking and eating inside the Hilleberg. What choice do you have at a certain point. You have to accept some risk.

 

[Buglebrush]

I've often wondered about this and this thread seems like a good as a place as any to pose this question.

Given a bear's unmatched olfactory senses (7x better than a Bloodhound), I wonder how much safer it keeps you taking the recommended precautions (cooking away from your camp, hanging food high, etc.)?

When you cook, your cloths will be covered in food odors. Maybe even your tent.

Plan A for a bear is your hang'em high food cache, but maybe their nose leads them to plan B, which is you since your clothes will be covered in food odors.

Anyone have any thoughts or experience with this?


Eddie

I've always thought about precautions as diminishing the distance my camp smell will travel. Stronger odors can be detected at longer distances, and may be more enticing.

 

[mike.adams.467]

Was she the bike tour lady who set her tent up by the post office?

Yes, and she had her food in the tent.

 

[medvedyt]

interesting to read the comments coming from where the people live. i do like alaskans sleep sometimes with food in the tent and not loosing sleep on that ... the same for meat like others said i do not keep it 100 yards away that is given and im not offering food for free to a bear tag or not ... there are places i avoided because bears were known to be an issue because habituated to steal food and destroy tents, i do avoid with passion our national park because you cannot have an unpacked rifle or shotgun and there is a big population of GB and BB so what is the point?

if bears are hunted they tend to avoid the contact with human they know better. when they stopped hunting GB in BC they started to have issues.

 

[GoneFullTrad]

I think putting your food in a bag and hanging it or a canister is only stopping curious and hungry bears. The kind of bear that is not going to follow the scent of food from your cook or storage site back to your camp....

However, no bear preparedness is going to stop a hungry and desperate bear from just following your scent trail from your cook site to your camp...

I think most bear-aware food practices are based primarily on confirmation bias and the fact that most bears are not desperate and hungry but are just curious and hungry until they are spooked or because they are conditioned to go after hanging bags of food.