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bandit86's avatar
bandit86
Explorer
Jun 28, 2016

Boondocking in bear country?

I'm not too worried about bears in general. My new workplace is an hour drive on a logging road from the nearest main road. Not many go there, or pass through there, just enough to keep the logging road from growing in. I saw one bear last year and he/she ran off when we approached with the ATVs, but judging by the landlines on the road there is many more of them. Te sound of the ATV I think kept them at bay.

With these bears not very used to humans I'm sort of wondering if maybe they don't know any better, and the last thing I want to do is wake up to one climbing in my window, or come back to the site to learn that a bear had helped itself to my food and is now trying to figure out which bed it should sleep in Goldilocks style.

My main concern is food, cooking, and the cleanup after-- anything that i might miss that might make my camper new and exciting. I have a small Coleman camp stove small enough to bring in the camper after use. I read that cleaning a grill and double bagging it, then spraying the bag with ammonia is a good deterrent, but after 10 hours in the field I don't think I want to spend that much time cleaning a grill. And what do you clean it with? If it's inside the camper is it going to be a problem? And what do you do with leftover food and garbage, how do you usually store it? Should I mark my territory and spray the camper outside or perimeter of camp site with ammonia?

32 Replies

  • I don't think I've ever heard of a bear breaking into a hard sided RV. They are smart so anything is possible. Back in the '70s the rangers in the Yosemite Valley were having a problem with bears breaking into cars. They had just switched to those trash containers with the mailbox style door in the top. They found one sow dropping her cubs down thru the door. But those bears are quite used to human presence.

    Personally I probably wouldn't worry about it much unless I saw clear evidence that there was something to worry about it. Maybe keep the grill away from the camper but we have never scrubbed down the grill when we were in bear country.
  • bandit86 wrote:
    I'm not too worried about bears in general. My new workplace is an hour drive on a logging road from the nearest main road. Not many go there, or pass through there, just enough to keep the logging road from growing in. I saw one bear last year and he/she ran off when we approached with the ATVs, but judging by the landlines on the road there is many more of them. Te sound of the ATV I think kept them at bay.

    With these bears not very used to humans I'm sort of wondering if maybe they don't know any better, and the last thing I want to do is wake up to one climbing in my window, or come back to the site to learn that a bear had helped itself to my food and is now trying to figure out which bed it should sleep in Goldilocks style.

    My main concern is food, cooking, and the cleanup after-- anything that i might miss that might make my camper new and exciting. I have a small Coleman camp stove small enough to bring in the camper after use. I read that cleaning a grill and double bagging it, then spraying the bag with ammonia is a good deterrent, but after 10 hours in the field I don't think I want to spend that much time cleaning a grill. And what do you clean it with? If it's inside the camper is it going to be a problem? And what do you do with leftover food and garbage, how do you usually store it? Should I mark my territory and spray the camper outside or perimeter of camp site with ammonia?

    For your garbage burn what you can, bury the rest, or simple place it away from the camp where the bears can eat what they want, with out coming into camp.
    Keep your food in sealed containers, in the camper. bears will only hunt for food they can smell.

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