Black bear safety notes

Short bear safety notes: 5/13/10

With black bears:

-playing dead is only for surprise encounters with grizzlies, never play dead with a black

-if they are stalking you or coming after you, fight them with everything you’ve got

-Don’t soak the taproot without a condom, especially when drinking (highest danger of loss of judgment)

-best strategy is prevention: keep pack, tent, clothes free of food odor, use bear-proof container when in food habituated black bear country

-use bear-proof container when above tree line and there is no way to hang food (even when there are trees, food can remain exposed with a poor hang, trees may not be configured for a good hang, may too far away from camp, (you need 50’ of braided thin cord, not p-cord) many therefore just sleep with their food in their tent, convenient but bad idea, invest in the carbon fiber bear-proof container, it is light, can be used in all applications and you never have to fuck with hanging or worrying about any animals getting your food

-if you do hang, need to put a rock on the end and toss line 10” out from trunk, 20’ high, if line gets wrapped on branch, be really careful about not pulling it back too hard, as the rock can then be coming straight at you at 60 MPH, if it gets stuck, best to try and lower it and re-throw the line, rather than to try and pull it back

-after you see a few bears, have a few sightings, the drama of it declines

-black bears are essentially forest adapted animals whose strategy is to flee and climb trees with trouble

-if you get an outlier, an aggressive one, a food/ people habituated animal, they can give you trouble,  they can weight 3 to 500 pounds, so they are not chopped liver, if push comes to shove and it looks like you can’t run them off you can throw them your pack and you get away

-they don’t want you, they want you food, if it becomes clear they want you, when the going gets tough, the tough get going

-otherwise, if they hassle you, yell, throw stuff, run them off, rock throwing is a time honored human adaptation to big predators, put some rocks outside your tent at night, big enough to sting but not so big as to cripple them

-99% if you don’t give then reason to hassle you, they won’t

Mountain lions: you’d be lucky to see one, if they get after you, stay big, fight like hell, bite them, poke their eyes, kick, whatever, but they are apex cats, not a lot you can do if one gets a good hold on your neck, most incidents are with joggers at dawn or dusk, dogs will attract them, not repel them, they can and will hunt and kill any dog, esp. if they have cover to get one in your camp at night, pretty much though, just don’t act like prey, they are not taught to hunt people, as people walk around like they own the whole place, they are skittish, they are cats, if they are hunted in your area, they will be scared, same as for black bears