We found this photo on the Facebook group Ketchikan Nostalgia Sharing. The post message read: “This is what happens when a bear in Alaska wants your leftover bacon.”
Not too reassuring to see this, is it? Luckily, most bears won’t go to this much trouble.
Here’s one comment on the Facebook post:
“My dad brother Jim, Don Vondersmith and his son Aaron and I went moose hunting outside of Vanderhoof, B.C. in 1976 and of course had to have a guide. Up at the camp was the camper he had taken up for his wife and daughter who were assisting him. The camper was destroyed by one of the local grizzlies who had decided there was something in there that appealed to him. He went in one end — through the entire length and out the other end. Don’t leave anything that smells like food or you might have a surprise.”
Have you ever had a “Bear Encounter of the Worst Kind?” Please leave a comment.
I’m a solo woman camper in a Casita (fiberglass) trailer. If this occurred with my camper, would it fair better or worse against this bear?
I would say that you are better off in your fiberglass trailer than the one pictured in the story.
A Casita’s fiberglass skin is smooth and a bit more difficult to get a good claw into as with the cheap aluminum trailer pictured – easier for the bear to tear a piece off and start digging… However, the vented doors for the refrigerator (and maybe even the windows), on a Casita could offer a bear some opportunities for snack time…
Always carry bear spray with you whenever camping in bear country…
Reminds me of a bumper sticker I once saw – two bears looking at a large SUV with stick figure decals of mom, dad, 4 kids and the family pets on the rear window.
One bear says to the other “Oh look! A menu!”
😯 😆 —Diane at RVtravel.com
Our experience with bear was far less dramatic. While camped in the mountains in the Carolina’s early spring a few years back we pulled into a National Park for a few days. Early in the season there were only a handful of campers. On checking in the ranger warned us that the bear were just coming out of hibernation and would be hungry. He instructed us to not leave any food out.
After setting up our pop up camper and starting a campfire for the evening meal I decided to take a short walk around the campground. A few minutes into the walk a bout I heard a woman yelling. Long story short part one is when I got to her site the woman was holding her little girl and told me she was inside her trailer while her daughter was outside eating a cookie on the picnic table.
Her daughter called to her to ask if she could feed the bear a cookie? Without thinking she said sure honey. When she looked out the trailer door there was her daughter sitting at the table feeding a rather large black bear her cookie. The mothers scream that alerted me scared the poor bear away. She and the daughter were fine but the cookies were destroyed.
Now for part 2. On my return to our camp to tell my wife of the experience I see my wife standing behind our car looking over the top of it in a rather tense pose. As I got closer I discovered the same bear was now raiding our camp cookie supply. I had set a pot of coffee on the campfire and left a bag of my favorite chocolate chip cookies on the table. The bear had just broken into them and decided to grab the coffee pot to go with them I guess. Of course the hot pot went flying and the bear had my cookies.
This could not stand. Those were my cookies…. or so I thought. The bear changed my mind taking the cookies with her into the woods. I hiked up to the rangers house to let him know to warn other campers. He scolded me saying that the cookies were not worth upsetting the bear. I told him he never had my wives cookies.
Moral to the stories are if you value your cookies (or life for that matter) don’t leave food were a bear can smell them, and they haver really good noses to go with their big teeth and claws! Man I missed those cookies.
Our son and his girlfriend were meeting us at a National Forest campground in southern Colorado, with us in our trailer and them in a tent. When the campground host found out it was the girlfriend’s first time camping, he asked if he could play a joke on her. Going along with him, we tried to keep a straight face as he told tall tales about bears, getting her good and scared before admitting that none of it was true. (But we told her not to put any food in the tent anyway!) Fast forward to a couple of nights later… with her not sleeping well because she’s now terrified of bears. She and my son heard something walking and breathing heavily right outside their tent, then knocking over an empty ice chest. Hoping for her sake it wasn’t really a bear, we unsuccessfully tried to convince her it was a raccoon. Next time we saw the campground host, he asked if we had heard the ruckus… a big old bear had knocked over a camping table at his site, then he saw it amble down our way.
She bravely joined us camping the next year in Wisconsin… but the first thing she asked was, “Are there any bears there?”
Tent campers are the soft tacos of the bear world.
The bear did that trailer a favor! The owner should have hung a sign on it saying ” Eat at Joe’s”