How To Secure Camping Food from Bears

When camping, one of the dangers that you face is the natural wildlife that inhabits the place where you have decided to go camping. In most instances, the animals will mind their own business as long as you leave the animals alone. This also applies for bears that live in camping grounds.

One of the problems, however, is that bears are sometimes attracted to the scent of human food. Here are some steps to help you secure your food from bears.

Containers

One of the cardinal rules in camping is that you should always pack your food in containers, and never leave them around the camp grounds. Always make sure that you only bring out your food when you are ready to prepare and eat them.

Even when grilling food over the camp fire, you should make sure that you do not leave any scraps on the camp fire. The burn meat will smell even stronger, and will be more palatable for bears. Make sure that you bring plastic containers where you can store your food and the leftovers. The best containers should have air proof lids that will keep the odor of the food from escaping.

Bags

After you have packed all the food in their air tight containers, the next step is for you to place all of your food containers into bags. You can use two types of bags – canvas bags and plastic bags.

Plastic grocery bags work well because they are usually large enough to accommodate a large number of food containers, and are pretty sturdy. They also have a handle that you can use to easily tie up the food. Canvas bags, however, are reusable.

Canvas bags, however, have a porous fabric that may let the smell of food out. If you are going to use canvas bags, make sure that you wash them thoroughly before bringing them to the camp site so that the smell of old food that was once stored in the canvas bag will be eliminated.

Hang

Now that you have packed the food into the bags, the next step is to hang the food. If you are camping or hiking in places that have designated camping sites, there will usually be stall poles with handles on the top where you can hang your food.

If there are none in the place where you have decided to go camping, however, you should simply hang the food from tall trees. Make sure that you climb the trees carefully, however, and that you do not leave the food in trees that are infested with ants or termites.

Feeding

Finally, make sure that you do not feed bears that you see out in the wild. Not all bears will attack you, and when you see a friendly bear chances are that you will think that feeding it is a gesture of kindness. In reality, however, this only reinforces bears to steal food from campers.

With these in mind, you should be able to keep your food safely away from bears while you are camping or while you are hiking.