Problems with bears and cougars....

So...what is the best thing to do with your food-scented trash while boondocking?

We seen or tracked bear, cougar and bobcat within a quarter mile of camp but have never had a issue. The coyotes will come to the edge of the clearing at night because they can smell the dogs. Close enough that if you shine a light their way they will stop yipping.

A few years back they did have to close a campground around Aspen because of a bear attack on a tent.

Bears, racoons, skunk and coyotes... yes. Mostly coyotes when boondocking in AZ. They discover our dog and spend their time trying to lure her into a wash. Very clever animals.
Bears used to visit us in Lake Tahoe area. Racoons at the beach and skunk there also.
Last year, the dog grabbed a wandering skunk from under the 5er. It was not a pleasant end to the evening.

Never while boondocking. We had a HUGE black bear visit the campsite next to us. Campground (think it was Lake Mary near Mammoth,CA) didn't have very good garbage control. We moved to another campground just a few miles away that was cleaner and didn't any problems. That was many years ago so maybe they've cleaned up since then.

I witnessed a black bear incident that was very funny although it could have been serious had things been a little different.

On the Cades Cove loop in the Smokies, a large Mama-bear and two cubs crossed the road and caused a bear jam. A bunch of cars stopped and were taking pictures thru the windows.

Of course, in every crowd there always has to be at least one or more idiots! This van pulls up and 4 people jump out and run toward the cubs to get a picture. Mama-bear sends the cubs up a tree and the photographers keep coming closer to the cubs. At this point Mama-bear does a bluff charge toward them that happens so fast it is over in the blink of an eye. If she had not stopped she would have bull-dozed all 4 of them before they could even think of moving.

As the 4 dove back toward the van and peeled away (probably toward the closest laundry!) we were laughing so hard we couldn't breath.

When you hear people tell you that 500 pound bears can run at 35 mph for short bursts, believe them :)

Horsedoc, they have a designated area in the park for the dumping of road kill? That sounds like an invitation to disaster -- a buffet for large carnivores! Plus it habituates the animals to associate food with human activity, which makes campgrounds much more entertaining, I'm sure.

Out West, the parks make a huge effort to seal off trash cans and dumpsters with animal-proof closures -- some of those darn latches are so tricky that you need a PhD to open the flap!

Not in our CG, but a cougar was seen several times and a couple of times with kits crossing the main highway in CSP. Was denning up near the Bager Clark cabin. A lady was walking in the Grace Coolidge walk-in fishing area and had a cougar following her. And explanation for this incident may have been this was near the dumping area for road kill in the park. Yet another siting near the Black Hills Play House had a cougar sitting on the side of the road waiting for a couple of autos to pass. A few years ago there were three killed in the outskirts of Rapid City - all three in residential areas

We saw some pictures of cougar tracks all over a friends campsite.
They were rafting the Green River in Desolation and Gray Canyons. A very remote area in Utah.
They awoke to find Cougar tracks all over their camp even under a campers hammock.
No one was harmed and no one realized the cat had even been around. Except for the tracks!
This happened just a few weeks ago.

We've seen bears in the distance in the Smokeys, U.P. of Michigan, and Yellowstone. The scariest was the Grizzly in Yellowstone. He was very large and at the top of a large hill in the back country just off the road. We actually drove by a man who was encouraging his 2 children (about 7-9 years old) to climb closer to the bear so he could get a better picture. DH was so angry he yelled out the window that "it is illegal to feed bears, get those kids back in the car." I am not sure if the man understood English but he ignored DH. The children were much smarter than dad because they were crying the whole time that they didn't want to go up the hill.

LenSatic wrote:

Tiger4x4RV wrote:

garyhaupt wrote:
I am just totally amazed and a tad disapoointed. Two or three 'cougar' retorts and no bear ones? I mean...c'mon...it's a gimme.

Please note that way more of us said we saw bears and that those bears were not an issue. Of course, most of us probably encountered black bears and the grizzlies you have up in B.C. are a whole 'nuther animal.

Gary was talking about the lack of jokes about bears. ;)

LS

:R :R


Gary Haupt