What to do: Grizzly in camp at night

What I've read/seen.... Bear attacking fight....threat, bluffing or nearby, prepare to spray or spray. Air horn as well....
I'd still defer to the ctaighead or grizzly institute for info.. A tent forms kinda me take barrier or size is think... Why I frown on using a hammock in bear country...just a snack then
 
Herrero regards a tent as a barrier of some sort. If the bear wants in, it's coming in, sure. But if you step out into a predaceous-minded black bear, you've just presented yourself as a willing meal. Add to that the fact that if you do not spot the black bear (black phase, cinnamon, chocolate, whatever) immediately in the darkness, with your bear spray ready, then the advantage is all bear. If you walk/crawl out of your tent into a nearby grizzly, you've gone from being a non-threat in your tent to being a potential threat. Again, if you don't immediately spot the bear, the bear has all the advantage.

Based on the fact that black bear attacks are usually predaceous and grizzly attacks are usually defensive, I see no point on putting yourself out there to assist or create either situation. Hence I lay in my tent with my bear spray ready to go until they move on, which is the highly likely scenario. In 40+ years of camping/backpacking, I've only suspected a bear walking by twice, and even then I wasn't sure. Maybe some walked by undetected, I don't know.
That does not count the summers mentioned in a previous post when I was working in areas of dense bear populations, where I know bears were frequently in the vicinity. Besides, if all you hear is a soft-footed animal sneaking around outside in the dark, how do you know if bear, cougar, wolf, coyote, skunk, etc, or sasquatch, based on sound of soft feet being placed on ground pretty lightly, typically.

Of course, keep this in perspective, in most areas (there are exceptions), the chance of a bear willingly coming into your camp at night is minutely small. The chance of it coming in with bad intention, if you have a clean camp and it hasn't been previously corrupted, is even smaller. If you're out in the backcountry and camping in a lightly- or never-used spot, the bears (probably) haven't been corrupted by ignorant campers like you see at developed campgrounds, so the chance of a food-conditioned bear is even smaller still. That is why I don't sleep in developed campgrounds.
 
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Jackson said:
Sounds like a recipe for disaster. Surprising they'd publish that. Startling and chasing a 300+ pound animal, that could end you in an instant, in the darkness. Maybe an ok thing to do for black bears, but I always thought grizzlies were the ones you never do anything threatening to unless they're already on the attack and becoming predatory.
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I think it'd be hard to tell, in the rush of a moment, if a grizzly is being predatory or defensive if blindsided and attacked by one of them, but I understand it's most likely to be defensive attack if a grizzly. Much better though if you can see them coming and quickly process the situation. (Are there cubs around? Did you startle it? Have you encroached on a carcass or berry patch? etc.) With black bears you can reasonably assume are always predatory if they begin to attack at which point, you certainly fight back with all your might, aiming for their nose and eyes as much as you can.

With grizzly attacks typically being defensive because they see you as a threat, most everything I've read on how to react in these situations is to show you're not a threat by not fighting back. Instead, fall to the ground, lay on your stomach, spread your feet (to give yourself more leverage with the ground and make it more difficult for you to be turned over by the bear) and cover your head and ears with your hands and arms and then try to remain as still as possible. It's also beneficial to have a pack on which can add as an additional barrier of protection between you and the bear in this situation as it investigates you and tries to disable you. Again, with grizzly attacks mostly being defensive in nature, they should see you as less of a threat when you do this and move on once they've concluded you aren't going to be a threat anymore.

I have an anecdotal account of this that I think supports this advice. A superior of mine at work was attacked by a grizzly in the Tetons 20 something years ago. He was out on an early morning trail run and slammed down by a grizzly. He initially tried fighting back or at least muscling himself away from the bear in some attempt to escape which in turn seemingly kept the bear engaged in the hostile conflict. After sustaining some rather severe injuries and becoming exhausted by trying to wrestle himself away and clock the bear a good one (an admittedly stupid idea by himself) he surrendered his will and accepted the idea it was the end for him and basically gave himself up. Once he did that, the bear must have sensed this and turned its attention elsewhere, stopping its attack and soon went on its way from there. Realizing the bear had moved on and that he himself wasn't dead yet, he was able to hobble his way back down the trail a ways until he encountered a group of local hiker-photographers on their way up the trail, the only other people on the same trail that morning, and the photographers were able to split up with one going back for help while the others stayed and waited with him. I think he ended up spending a week or two in a local hospital to be repaired and recover from the incident.

In fact...after googling, here's a link to an article among many that was later written up on the incident: https://www.nationalparkstraveler.o...s-grizzly-encounter-grand-teton-national-park
 
Old thread, I see, but we just finished a 7 day trip in Glacier and we had two different camps with bears.

One was a Black Bear about 40 feet away from our tent on one evening.

The other was a Grizzly Bear at 6 AM on a different day that was about 5 feet away from our tent.

It is not any easy question to answer, there are so many variables.

After our experiences we had a lot of questions about what we did right and what we did wrong.

We talked to several Park Rangers, both Front and Back Country rangers and a Bear Ranger and even they all gave slightly conflicting answers.

The only common theme was our comfort level and ability to get a feel for the bears behavior.

If you are with a group, MAKE A PLAN!

After our first encounter we came up with some basic ground rules.

If we had another bear encounter we would try to
do the following....

1. Get together as a group, there is safety in numbers.

2. Say who was in charge, that way everyone did not try something different. We would try to act as one, with one person directing the group.

3. Announce if you are going to, or about to deploy Bear spray

It can be a pretty adrenaline filled time when you are suddenly face to face with a bear in the Backcountry.
 
Fatboy said:
Old thread, I see, but we just finished a 7 day trip in Glacier and we had two different camps with bears.

One was a Black Bear about 40 feet away from our tent on one evening.

The other was a Grizzly Bear at 6 AM on a different day that was about 5 feet away from our tent.

It is not any easy question to answer, there are so many variables.

After our experiences we had a lot of questions about what we did right and what we did wrong.

We talked to several Park Rangers, both Front and Back Country rangers and a Bear Ranger and even they all gave slightly conflicting answers.

The only common theme was our comfort level and ability to get a feel for the bears behavior.

If you are with a group, MAKE A PLAN!

After our first encounter we came up with some basic ground rules.

If we had another bear encounter we would try to
do the following....

1. Get together as a group, there is safety in numbers.

2. Say who was in charge, that way everyone did not try something different. We would try to act as one, with one person directing the group.

3. Announce if you are going to, or about to deploy Bear spray

It can be a pretty adrenaline filled time when you are suddenly face to face with a bear in the Backcountry.
Click to expand...

I'd like to hear more about the griz if you are willing to share. Was everyone awake and moving around? Cooking breakfast? Still in tents and someone woke up to take a leak and saw the bear close?

thanks
 
funny to see this thread back. just a couple more cents:

if anyone is truly worried about this scenario, you can do what people in Alaska sometimes do and run a portable electric fence around camp. my brother often did this in brown bear country when he lived up there. there are entire systems that weigh like 2 pounds. I wouldn't be surprised if these systems weren't getting more popular in the lower 48 as the brown bears spread (though I don't know how well they work when the ground is very dry).

one time I was backpacking in AK and we had grizzlies not far from camp in the evening. we had made plenty of noise and they were well aware of us. that night, people who are more experienced with this sort of thing than I am recommended that everyone take a (clean!) metal cookpot into their tent so it would be easy to make a racket if the bears decided to investigate closely during the night.
 
There was four of us doing a northern traverse of Glacier National Park over 6 nights/7 days.

The group included my 16 year Nephew, who has never backpacked or camped out.

My 27 year daughter, who has been backpacking and camping with me since she was 8. She is deathly afraid of bears!

Also, my Son-in-Law, who has only done a few weekend trips with us.

Then, of course, me. I do not have much experience in Grizzly Bear country.

On our third night out we were camped at 2 of the upper sites at Hole-in-the-Wall.

At around 6 AM my Son-in-law got up to go to the bathroom. About five steps from the tent he saw the bear less than 10 feet away.

He backed up to the tent and said there is a bear out here. My 5 foot, 110 lb daughter came out the tent with her Bear spray and woke up my nephew who had a tent set up next to theirs and woke me up were I was camped down at the next site about 30 feet away.

We all were out of our tents, barefoot and armed with our Bear spray. We all gathered by my daughter's tent with the Bear about 10 feet away tearing up logs looking for food.

We stood together trying to shoo the bear away. He (?) completely ignored us, but he also kept moving closer checking out the logs looking for insects and what not.

This went on for a few minutes (felt MUCH longer) before he moved on somewhat.

Bad part was he moved down to where my campsite was. We all went down there and hazed him away from there.

He went back to our upper site and we again yelled at him to move on. At one point he was about five feet away and I was a split second away from using my Bear spray.

Lucky for all of us he turned away and crossed the creek in search of food about 100 feet away.

While one of our group watched him, 2 of us started breaking down camp and I went to the little bluff overlooking the lower to sites that had 2 tents and 3 people in them. I yelled several times "HEY, THERE IS A BEAR IN CAMP!"

Then I started breaking down my camp while the bear crossed the creek to the west of us and headed south into the forest.

When I was almost all packed I went to check in on the 3 guys camped below us.

What I saw was them all standing in a semicircle in one site while about 30 feet away the bear walked through the other site.

It looked like the bear actually walked on their tent(it was already down, I do not know if they started breaking it down before the bear showed up or what) and then the bear started heading back towards us.

I went back to our group and got everyone together again and tried to find out where the bear was, but we could not see where it went.

While we finished the packing we saw the other 3 hikers hitting the trail out of Hole-in-the-Wall.

We went and got all our food from the food prep area and headed out.

When we got the main trail we saw another Grizzly about 40 feet off the trail eating berries.

We then hiked to Hawksbill, before we stopped to make breakfast.

I will say both bears looked like Sub-Adults and pretty much could care less that we were there. At no time did the they show any signs of agitation.

This happened the morning after a Mtn Goat stalked us from Boulder Pass down to the spur trail into Hole-in-the-Wall. We had a pretty exciting 24 hours
 
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Fatboy said:
There was four of us doing a northern traverse of Glacier National Park over 6 nights/7 days.

The group included my 16 year Nephew, who has never backpacked or camped out.

My 27 year daughter, who has been backpacking and camping with me since she was 8. She is deathly afraid of bears!

Also, my Son-in-Law, who has only done a few weekend trips with us.

Then, of course, me. I do not have much experience in Grizzly Bear country.

On our third night out we were camped at 2 of the upper sites at Hole-in-the-Wall.

At around 6 AM my Son-in-law got up to go to the bathroom. About five steps from the tent he saw the bear less than 10 feet away.

He backed up to the tent and said there is a bear out here. My 5 foot, 110 lb daughter came out the tent with her Bear spray and woke up my nephew who had a tent set up next to theirs and woke me up were I was camped down at the next site about 30 feet away.

We all were out of our tents, barefoot and armed with our Bear spray. We all gathered by my daughter's tent with the Bear about 10 feet away tearing up logs looking for food.

We stood together trying to shoo the bear away. He (?) completely ignored us, but he also kept moving closer checking out the logs looking for insects and what not.

This went on for a few minutes (felt MUCH longer) before he moved on somewhat.

Bad part was he moved down to where my campsite was. We all went down there and hazed him away from there.

He went back to our upper site and we again yelled at him to move on. At one point he was about five feet away and I was a split second away from using my Bear spray.

Lucky for all of us he turned away and crossed the creek in search of food about 100 feet away.

While one of our group watched him, 2 of us started breaking down camp and I went to the little bluff overlooking the lower to sites that had 2 tents and 3 people in them. I yelled several times "HEY, THERE IS A BEAR IN CAMP!"

Then I started breaking down my camp while the bear crossed the creek to the west of us and headed south into the forest.

When I was almost all packed I went to check in on the 3 guys camped below us.

What I saw was them all standing in a semicircle in one site while about 30 feet away the bear walked through the other site.

It looked like the bear actually walked on their tent(it was already down, I do not know if they started breaking it down before the bear showed up or what) and then the bear started heading back towards us.

I went back to our group and got everyone together again and tried to find out where the bear was, but we could not see where it went.

While we finished the packing we saw the other 3 hikers hitting the trail out of Hole-in-the-Wall.

We went and got all our food from the food prep area and headed out.

When we got the main trail we saw another Grizzly about 40 feet off the trail eating berries.

We then hiked to Hawksbill, before we stopped to make breakfast.

I will say both bears looked like Sub-Adults and pretty much could care less that we were there. At no time did the they show any signs of agitation.

This happened the morning after a Mtn Goat stalked us from Boulder Pass down to the spur trail into Hole-in-the-Wall. We had a pretty exciting 24 hours
Click to expand...

Thanks for the extra details, sounds like the best possible bear encounter, he knew you were there and did not care about you at all. Still unnerving.

Sounds like you had time for some great photos :)
 
That is one of our regrets, when he was super close but not one of had their phones, they were all still in the tents.

Three of us were in underwear and 3 of us were barefoot until he left us and then we were so focused on packing up and leaving that I did not take a single picture. My daughter got some video once he was across the creek from us.

We were all kinda freaked out about the sudden, early morning experience. The bear could have cared less though :).
 
It is sort of funny what happened afterwards. We were heading to Goat Haunt that day and there is a ranger station there. We could not find a Backcountry Ranger when we arrived but we found them the next morning to report our experience.

The Ranger said they had already received reports and a team of Rangers were on the way up already.

We asked them if we should have sprayed the bear?

Before, I give you his answer, let me say what the front country Ranger said when I picked up our permits a few days earlier. I asked what should we do if a non-aggressive bear approached our food area and when should we spray it? Their response was to only spray as a last resort or in an attack type situation, and not to spray as a deterrent to keep a bear out of our area. So, that was sort of my mindset when this was happening.

The Backcountry Ranger said, "I would have sprayed it."

We had a lot of little coincidences on this trip and one was just as we were arriving at Many Glacier Lodge, at the very end of our trip, I saw some Rangers getting out of a pickup. We were all beat and it was starting to rain. It was a few minutes after 3pm and we had a 4pm shuttle to catch at the lodge and EVERYONE just wanted to get off their feet and sit in the lodge for a few minutes.

I thought it was important to report our Black Bear experience that we had that night at Elizabeth lake, so I asked them "Are you Backcountry Rangers?" Their response was "No, we are Bear Rangers". OMG, we ended up talking to them for the next 30 minutes in the rain. She said our encounter was already on the internet and she asked us a bunch of questions about our experience with the Grizzly.

She was perfectly happy with our reaction to the bear and even if we had sprayed it, it would have been fine. She leaned more to not spraying it for several reason and believe we made the right choices. She also gave several reasons why and did also reaffirm that she was not there and a lot of the choices that are made in the excitement of the moment should not always be judged too harshly afterwards.

Then when we got to St. Mary's I told the Ranger about our Grizzly encounter, she spun here monitor around and showed us a picture on a Reddit thread from the group below us.

I do feel a little let down by the 3 men camped below us. They were all in their thirties it seemed, and had at least some experience in the backcountry. The fact that they left so quickly and did not bother to check on us seems..... well seems.... Kinda...... Chicken shit?

That may seem harsh since we did not know each other, except for sharing dinner time we each other and sharing a campsite.

In all fairness, they were probably completely unaware of our encounter with the bear, they probably just thought we saw a bear. We yelled out that there was a bear, then they had their closes encounter with it.

Here is the Reddit thread ..... Reddit Grizzly Bear at Hole in the Wall

I would be interested in hearing what others feel about that.....
 
I personally don't think bears are the vicious killers they're made out to be, though there may be exceptions. I've had NINE blackies of various ages and sizes come through my yard so far in the last two months with me sitting right there on my patio, and all were aware of me. They acted like they were just passing through. I live in the Colorado mtns not far from a river, so maybe they were going for drinks. If they were grizzlies, I might feel more threatened, though, and I won't take blackies for granted, either. I have bear spray handy.
 
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