How to Protect Yourself From Bears While Hiking
Reading Time: 9 minutes Camping is one of the interesting activities you can do to amuse yourself, reconnect with nature get rid of the daily routine. Still, there are risk to walk a lone in the wild. One of the these risks is bears counter!
Therefore, we will provide you with a special guide to acknowledge bears types and how to deal and protect yourself from any danger.
What Bear Can You Expect In Different States?
There are only two types of bears that are found in the wild forests of North America: the black and brown bears.
Black Bears
There are about 30,000 to 40,000 black bears in the California forests, and there are none of the brown bear in these forests due to poaching by poachers in the state.
Do not be deceived that they are called black bear, but their colours differ, some of them are hated, some are brown, and some are black, with brown on their mouth.
One of the most famous black bear, the American black bear, is widely found in North America, and its length ranges from four to seven feet.
Most of the places that American black bears live in are forests, and high places because they are good climbers, but they are adapted to normal and sloping areas, around lakes.
Brown Bears
The grizzly bears. They range in length from four when not standing to seven when fully standing, and are fast, travelling 30 miles per hour. Called
Brown bear are more dangerous and aggressive than black bears to protect their young. One of the most famous and most aggressive of these bears is the grizzlies bear, and despite its aggressiveness, it is the smallest number of black bear.
You can find Brown bears in the following places:
- Yellowstone National Park.
- Fishing areas in Alaska.
- Northwest Montana.
- Northwest Washington and northern Utah.
Hiking In Bear Country
An important note, before you go camping, you must search for this place, in addition to knowing the types of bears present in the area to preserve yourself.
When starting your journey, you should pay attention to the route you are taking. You should be vigilant and look for signs of bears such as torn tree trunks, traces of bear claws on trees or dirt, and carcasses of other animals in space.
Also, to search for bear, you can search in places of a rough nature or in places where there are heavy tree stands or places where there is water, and around berry plants, or near camping areas where there are leftovers of food by people.
Bears appear more at night and dusk, so if you move at these times, you have to be careful.
What Should I Do if I See a Bear?
A very important question in order to preserve yourself and those around you.
Seeing bear in national parks is a beautiful and exciting activity for many people, but caution should be taken because these bears are wild and dangerous, and their movements cannot be known.
Despite its small numbers, there are bear attacks on people, which have caused serious injuries and deaths, and there is no specific way to protect yourself from bears.
And to prevent the danger of bears, you must take safety instructions and be calm and try to calm the bears that you encounter.
And when you arrive at the national park, go directly to the visitor centre, which will provide you with information and ways to protect yourself from bears.
Avoiding an Encounter
To avoid encountering bears, you must follow the etiquette of watching, which is the first step to avoid bears and their danger, as you must take an appropriate distance between you and the bear while preparing for any danger.
It is good information that bear avoid humans when they hear people coming. In addition, you should focus heavily on what surrounds you, especially in places that indicate the presence of bears.
Bear Encounters
When encountering a bear, try to use these methods in order to avoid their danger:
- Self-Identification: where you identify the bear that you are a human being and not a weak animal that is considered as its prey, by standing on your feet without worry and waving both of your arms, and if the bear stands on its feet and makes its body larger, this indicates that this bear is curious Big threat.
- Keep calm: an important note that the bears do not want to attack you and they all want to get away from their place even if the bear scream, this indicates their distance from the place.
Also, these bear can woo you by salivating or yawning, repeat Its ears, the roar, what you have to either be calm without screaming or a crazy act that frightens the bear and attacks you, and does not try to imitate the sound of the bears.
- Retreat quickly when there are children, in order to protect them and not expose them to danger because of the fast ceramics they have, which may lead to the bear attacking you.
- Moving in a group, so the number of people is larger and noisier in terms of sound. The smell makes the bear realize that there is a large group of people from long distances. It makes the bears afraid and moves away from the groups.
- Try to inflate yourselves and make yourselves bigger by standing on higher ground.
- The bear does not reach your food because this encourages it to attack you and harm you.
- Do not drop the bag. It gives you protection from the back.
- When the bear is stationary, try to retreat sideways and slowly, and do not give your back to the bear in order to watch it and know its movements. In addition, moving sideways is not a threat to bears and you should not run.
And when you see a bear that is following you, you must stand in front of it and do not try to run because the bear are very fast and are as fast as racing horses, and do not climb trees because bears, especially black ones, can do that.
- Leave the place or take another path, and give a path for the bears to escape and get away from you.
- Do not approach a mother and her cubs, do not touch her cubs because this increases the chance of her attacking you very much to protect her young.
Bear Attacks
Bear attacks are rare, as these attacks are to protect food and protect their cubs, and to stay away from their place, despite that, you must be a little careful, and some tips explain the difference between brown and black bear attacks and reporting bear accidents It helps others avoid attacks.
Brown/grey bear: In order to avoid attacks by brown bears, put your bag on the ground, and then lie on your stomach and put your hands above your neck while they are clasped, spread your legs apart to make it more difficult for the brown bear to turn over you.
Remain in this position until it goes away the brown bear is from the area, but if he attacks you, respond with all your might and hit him in the face.
Black Bear: To protect yourself from the attacks of the black bear, you do not need to surrender or camouflage that you are dead, its attacks can be avoided by escaping to the car or a building, and if there is no return slowly and quietly, and if it attacks you, kick it and hit it in the face especially at his mouth.
Note: If the bear attacks your tent, defend yourself because this attack is rare, but the bear sees that there is food in your tent or is preparing you as prey, so you must be careful during the night.
How To Protect Yourself From Bears While Hiking
Hike With A Group
The first way to protect yourself from bear attacks is to travel and camp with a group of people, which works to create more noise than it works to avoid bears attacking groups and escaping from where they are.
But if you wander alone, you must find a source of noise to make the bears think that you are walking with A group, such as singing, clapping and making noise.
Stay On The Trail
The second way to avoid a bear attack is to take the right path and stay on it, and taking other methods does not reduce the rate of bear attack but increases the percentage of your loss and injury and increase the rate of a bear attack.
Hike During Daylight Hours
Bears are present and are most active at dusk, night, and early morning, so if you like to walk, take a walk in the daytime, but if you want to walk at night and dusk, you must be careful.
Don’t Tempt A Bear’s Nose
Bears have a strong sense of smell. Black bears can smell carcasses and food from 20 miles away, so they do not:
- Do not leave food leftovers behind or on the road, pack food leftovers and waste in bags, and do not leave a trace behind.
- Not to leave the bags alone in the camping area without supervision.
- Never leave your food unattended in the camp.
Clean Up After Yourself
Bears smell very strongly, as they smell food from a large distance, so they do not leave food residues behind.
Meals should also be hidden in a safe place away from your tent. So that bears do not attack your tent in the middle of the night.
Garbage and food leftovers should also be disposed of in a place far from the camping place, or food leftovers can be buried or placed in a high place, or you can use a wastebasket that is resistant to bear attacks.
Pack Bear Spray
If you follow the above instructions, you can avoid encountering bears, but if you happen to encounter bears, you can use a bear spray.
The bear-resistant spray will not cost you anything, as it costs 30 dollars in the market, is light in weight, and is not difficult to use. And I will write later on how to use it and the best types of these sprays.
There is no great danger to bears from this spray, it is only used in order to keep them away from you, the active ingredient is concentrated pepper, its effect is like the effect of spray on people.
Be aware of the signals you telegraph.
When you go to camping places, you should not shower with soap or shampoo that has a very strong smell because bears can smell the simplest smells. If you put a strong smell, it increases the chance of bears attacking you.
In the Alaskan tundra, don’t bring light-coloured tents. After several studies on smells, images and sounds, it was concluded that the camouflage fabrics were not noticed by the bears, unlike the tents of solid or unusual colors, especially the light yellow color, which encourages the bears to attack. And if you own such tents, you should put them in a camping place out of sight.
Never, ever, ever play dead unless you’re knocked down by a grizzly.
When attacked by brown bears, you must perform a dead pose. You lie on your stomach with your hands clasped behind your neck and let the brown bear attack your backpack and don’t move until it’s gone.
But this method is not effective with black bears because they attack in order to kill, so use a mist spray on black bears.
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