We are waiting for CO results to come out for our first backpack, archery elk hunt. We are breaking camp each AM. Unit 55 and if not successful, then we will OTC.
Myself and 3 others are locked in a debate about what (if anything) to do with your food at night when in your tent.
what are you doing with your food at night? I have researched the guidelines...10 feet up ,4 feet away from trunk. I know I can?t find a tree like that here!!
We are waiting for CO results to come out for our first backpack, archery elk hunt. We are breaking camp each AM. Unit 55 and if not successful, then we will OTC.
Myself and 3 others are locked in a debate about what (if anything) to do with your food at night when in your tent.
what are you doing with your food at night? I have researched the guidelines...10 feet up ,4 feet away from trunk. I know I can?t find a tree like that here!!
HAHA. I hope I dont have to shoot at any bear in my life!
I should have been more clear with my initial post, we are backpack hunting and carrying camp with us in our packs. So we'll set up each night in bivy/tents.....dont have the back for carrying a bear bag or cooler. I am NOT ok with having food in my tent when I am sleeping.
Anyone hang their food when backpack hunting? Anyone say screw it and keep it in their tent?
I backpack hunt in grizzly country both with a partner and on my own so food storage is the most important issue if you want to keep bears away from your camp. Not just food either toiletries, anything with a scent even some bug sprays(citronella probably smells great to a bear). I always hang my food bag at least 100m away from my tent, and yes 10' up and 4' out is best but sometimes like you said it's hard to find the right tree. Height is usually not the issue it's the 4' feet away but I just do what I can. Also don't cook in your tent or set up your cooking area near your tent, we try to set up the fire /cooking area at least 50m or more from out sleeping area. If you kill an animal be sure to wash up as best you can and avoid bloody clothes in the tent. Keep a clean camp and with four of you it will be good. Have a great time and don't get overly stressed about bears.
When backpacking, your food is likely only about a pound a day per person, so hanging isn't much of an issue. I bring plenty of line along (I find the next size up from P-cord works well). You can actually hang a 100# pack on the stub of a branch by using two lines. Have a good steel ring or caribeaner on the end of one; pass the end of the 2nd line thru the ring; toss the tag end of the ring line over the stub, and wrap it around to tie it off. Leave about 4' on the ring end and tie the loose line to your food dry bag and pull it up and out. Never bring food into your tent unless it is in the winter. It's not just bears, as those little critters will chew holes in your gear to get at a few crumbs.
I have always kept food in my ten't but most of the time its freeze dried packages, minus the trail mix we bring. But I clean up and store trash away from camp. Couple years ago we set up camp in a highly trafficked bear area, never had any issues. But could have just gotten lucky.
Mice and chipmunks will likely cause you way more issues than black bears in Colorado imo. I hunt in SE Wyoming and have honestly never done anything to guard against bears and have never had one in camp in 30 years of hunting up there.
I think Hilltop is correct.
Little critters may cause you issues but it's unlikely you'll have major problems with bears in Colorado.
Take some basic precautions and you should be ok.
And of course we're just talking about black bears, no grizzlies here to worry about.
My own opinion - fear of bears is way overblown. I hunted Colorado for over 20 years and now in Alaska for over 12 years. I have camped many nights with nothing between me and the wildlife except for that thin piece of nylon. Many of the nights were in prime brown bear habitat such as Kodiak Island and along the coast in SW Alaska. Bears everywhere. That's what we were after! Food in Alaska has mainly been MH stored in next to the tent. Trash and used bags were placed in a plastic bag and stored in close vicinity. Never had a problem with bears getting into anything around camp. Bears are almost as afraid of us as we are of them. Most places you hunt also has a season on bears. People to a bear means guns and problems.
I disagree with Randy’s advice a little on this one. I grew up on Kodiak and never had issues with bears. There is so much hunting pressure up there that they are rarely an issue. They would break into cabins and sheds if there was good stuff inside but but I never knew anyone that had a tent messed while they were out. In Montana I had several friends who had lack bears break into dirty camps never when people where in them though. I live in NW Wyoming now and grizzlies are a real issue. I have heard stories of griz being in camp with in two hours of cooking and have know multiple people who have lost tents to grizzlies.
I guess I would say there are some general rules on best bear management practices but really it comes down to where you are. For me, when I camp in griz country in Wyoming I keep a super clean camp. I keep all of my food an toiletries out of camp and anything that smells. I black bear country I might hang my food and I probably wouldn’t cook at my tent but that is about it.
When we camp up high above tree line And can’t hang food, I stash it a few hundred yards away in a rock outcrop. Not ideal about all you can do with out packing a bear proof container in with you.
You can make any standard cooler "bear proof" with a ratchet strap. Bear proof is like waterproof: it's not unlimited. A waterproof watch is only good to a certain depth. You put a bear proof cooler near a ledge and the bear knocks it 20' off onto some rocks and it busts open, that's not necessarily the bear being clever or the cooler not being bear proof.
It's more important to keep anything with ANY odor away from your camp than to guarantee the bear can't get into it. Hanging is helpful but not the only option: that's why there are no garbage cans hung in trees. Deterrance and Distance. Throw a ratchet strap on the cooler, put it 200' feet from your tents, and don't smear chocolate on the outside. You'll be fine.
There is a BIG difference between:
* Dealing with grizzlies vs. black bears. Grizzlies in Yellowstone habituated to humans and their food are much more persistent.
* Dealing with laws vs. practical protection. In a place where bear-proof containers are required, everything I said above should be ignored. Containers must actually BE certified bear-proof or you can get fined.
We've always used drybags and just hang them from a tree and that has served us well. A few times we rode horses in we took an empty pool chlorine barrel that has screw lock lid and we just kept that on the ground away from out tent. It had Peanut butter and Oatmeal even pre-cooked bacon in a vacuum bag. Heck, we never had issues.
Same here. I imagine you're taking freeze dried meals since you are backpacking in. I load each day of food into a 1 gallon ziplock bag and at the end of the day, the trash goes into the ziplock bag. I have always kept my food and trash in my tent in ziplock bags and have never had an issue. Good luck!
I think we are on very similar pages here. As indicated in my post, I was generalizing on Colorado and Alaska since that has been my experience. The OP was talking about hunting in Colorado. I have hunted in Colorado since 1975 and only had a bear mess with one of our downed animals once in all those years. We left many animals overnight after dressing and propping over logs because it wasn't easily possible to get it out that same day.
I have had generally the same experiences with bears as you mentioned. Not much bad activity in camp when people are around. They do break into a lot of cabins and outbuildings in Alaska when people have them boarded up for the winter. They will also get into the tents when people set them up and leave them unoccupied during the week when the hunters go back to town to work during the week.
I truly think Wyoming/Yellowstone is a totally different animal so to speak. I understand the bears in that area have very little to no fear of humans because they have been so protected for years now.
My comment about people and fear of bears is based on my being around people that were terrified just of the mention of the word bear. I have stories of people running from the fishing stream to the cabin almost 2 miles away because we were in bear country. Not pleasant to be with people like that. In general, the bear wants to avoid you as much or more than you want to avoid them. I have had several bears within 25 yards and never felt threatened. They knew I was there and I knew they were there. A person needs to respect them more than fear them.
Randy
Every year there are times when a bear gets into a camp/tent where the occupants have something in their tent that the bear likes. These things happen in areas where the bears don't have a association with people other than what people leave in the camping areas or what the bears come across in their daily travels.
I will agree that there are hundreds of times that people have food in their tents and nothing happens, but what about that one time in a thousand where a bear wanders into your camp and has a hankering for that half ate bag of potato chips that you have laying in the tent with you. All it takes is once for that one in a thousand bear to either try or dies get into your tent with you sleeping peacefully where the problems arise.
It does happen and for me I'll keep my food stuffs a ways away from myself when I am camping in the back country where bears might present themselves. This also includes food that is in vacuum sealed bags and has no perceivable odor to me since a bears sense of smell is a lot better than a humans.
3 years ago hunting archery elk in CO. I set up a spike camp (solo) after a long and steep climb, then dropped off the other side towards water and the direction of the bull i'd encountered the day before. The climb took longer than I thought and I was running way behind. Dropped my Ziploc of food for day two and mtn house dinner in my tarp with the rest of my sleep system and headed out. Saw a bear about a 1/2 mile away, no tag of course.
Got back to camp very late that evening. After a very long hike, as I was approaching the waypoint i'd dropped on my GPS, my headlamp picked up the green reflectors from my shelter. "Ah, there it is. Finally." I thought to myself. Then it hit me and I stopped dead in my tracks...
I don't have any reflectors on my shelter.
I flashed my light back towards my camp and of course those two green reflectors were gone. That bear was within 30 yards of my tarp, probably getting his nerve up to push in a little closer. While it was unsettling (this was before I had an InReach), I wasn't too worried about an attack. BUT, it taught me a lesson and I got off cheap. I easily could have come back to a giant mess if I'd have taken much longer to get back. It would have ROYALLY SUCKED in my exhausted state to have had to pack up the remains of my camp in the middle of the night and hike back down off that steep mtn in the dark because a bear had destroyed my sleep system.
Since then I just don't tempt fate. Its just too easy to keep my food separate from my tent. It would have cost me at least one day of hunting and a lot of money to drive out to a decent sized town to replace my pad & tarp, and potentially even my bag, all b/c I did something stupid. I knew better, just got lazy. Nowadays, I hang my food in a zpacks bear bag when I'm spiked out, or inside my vehicle if it's nearby. I still cook (mtn house) inside my shelter if I'm truck camping, but never if I'm spiked out. And I burn all food wrappers each night. Makes pretty decent tender inside my cylinder stove.
