Cold camps

[Robson Valley]

Here are two of the lesser known reasons that nobody here does hammock camping.
1. Cold
2. Bears

Can you imagine? Standing up, 10' (3m) tall. And the biggest most fearless land predator on the planet.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/polar-bear-visits-nunavik-family-home-1.5536292

 

[woodsorrel]

I encourage people to hammock camp. Polar Bears enjoy a good burrito as much as the next guy.

I spent time in Churchill this past winter observing polar bears. It was an amazing trip I will never forget.

- Woodsorrel

 

[Toddy]

So what do you do ? being trapped inside a tent collapsing under the weight of a bear is not my idea of fun either.

 

[Robson Valley]

You aren't going to be in a tent in polar bear country in polar bear time.
Those guys are intent on BUSTING INTO your house!

Was that not an bottom-wiping size of a bear? Most aren't that big.
Good thing he was home when that went down.
My Dad says he was face to face with a 12' footer but I was not there to see it.
Measure that. From a back foot to a forehead. 12 feet tall.

You go to bed , armed to the freakin' teeth. Shotgun loads at 6 feet are about the best you can do.
Everything is accurate at hand-shaking distance. A 3" load of OO buck is 9 pellets.
Each pellet has the size and the muzzle energy of a .38 cal pistol load.
A cute little Boito 12 ga x 3" s/s coach gun (loaded) is your friend, day and night.

Plan B is dogs and hope they are not stupid enough to draw the bears into camp.
Then you are going to have to get up and shoot, anyway. Then you gotta go pee. Right?
By then, there's light in the sky, you been up half the night, the dogs don't care.
You learn what 40 Creek Rye tastes like at 5 AM.

 

[TLM]

We descend from brachiating apes, so one could climb up 5 m and set a hammock there. Some bears do climb trees well though so how about up a cliff face. Land mines are probably not allowed against bears. Some chemicals do cover human and food scent, bears might not be dumb so a whiff of ammonium ions might actually lure them in instead of repelling.

There seems to be room for innovation still ..........

 

[C_Claycomb]

RV,
This could be fun.

Very much a straw man argument. You don't like the idea of hammocks, think they are stupid or something, you like guns and shooting critters, you like to make much of there being big bears where you live, and how bitter your winters are.

Quaqtaq is about 1920 miles from where you live. They don't have trees, you don't have polar bears and as much as you go on about how cold you have it, this week the McBride weather station is reporting -1C to +15C where-as Quaqtaq is more -17C to -9C. All that alone should be enough to show this was a really bad example to use.

Folk in the UK might as well say that we won't go out walking without 10 litres of water and armed guards because Libya is really hot and full of dangerous people.

Actually, you live further away from Quaqtaq than I do from Svalbard, where a polar bear actually ate someone camping in a tent. No one would suggest that should be used as a reason for people not camping in tents in the UK, France, Germany or Romania.

There are plenty of good reasons that a hammock might be a poor choice, or a less than good choice, without dragging in treeless wastes, arctic weather, lions, tigers or bears. Maybe if you could provide hard statistical data that your local bears are more fond of chewing up unwary hammock camping visitors than they are tent camping locals and visitors, that would indeed be useful to the any forum members considering visiting your area of BC to camp in hammocks. My own reading on the subject is that such data does not exist.

My own take is that the percentage of people that use hammocks in the UK, US or Canada is tiny compared to tent campers, the chance of meeting a hammock camper is pretty small, especially if you yourself are not spending time on camp sites. This means that not seeing people in hammocks doesn't need a particular cause, such as bears and is more likely to do with where you look, who you meet, the type of camp sites you see, the type of land and why people are in it.

This makes for interesting reading, not specifically about hammocks though

Bear Attacks Increasing Worldwide

A French composer on a trip to Canadas Northwest Territories to record the sounds of nature was attacked in his tent in the middle of the night and killed…

cowboystatedaily.com

 

[santaman2000]

So what do you do ? being trapped inside a tent collapsing under the weight of a bear is not my idea of fun either.

I was thinking the same thing.

 

[santaman2000]

.....You go to bed , armed to the freakin' teeth. Shotgun loads at 6 feet are about the best you can do.
Everything is accurate at hand-shaking distance. A 3" load of OO buck is 9 pellets.
Each pellet has the size and the muzzle energy of a .38 cal pistol load......

Actualy a standard 2 & 3/4” shell contains 9 pellets. at least all the ones I have do (various brands: Remington, Winchester, And a few less expensive ones)

 

[santaman2000]

RV,
This could be fun.

Very much a straw man argument. You don't like the idea of hammocks, think they are stupid or something, you like guns and shooting critters, you like to make much of there being big bears where you live, and how bitter your winters are.

Quaqtaq is about 1920 miles from where you live. They don't have trees, you don't have polar bears and as much as you go on about how cold you have it, this week the McBride weather station is reporting -1C to +15C where-as Quaqtaq is more -17C to -9C. All that alone should be enough to show this was a really bad example to use.

Folk in the UK might as well say that we won't go out walking without 10 litres of water and armed guards because Libya is really hot and full of dangerous people.

Actually, you live further away from Quaqtaq than I do from Svalbard, where a polar bear actually ate someone camping in a tent. No one would suggest that should be used as a reason for people not camping in tents in the UK, France, Germany or Romania.

There are plenty of good reasons that a hammock might be a poor choice, or a less than good choice, without dragging in treeless wastes, arctic weather, lions, tigers or bears. Maybe if you could provide hard statistical data that your local bears are more fond of chewing up unwary hammock camping visitors than they are tent camping locals and visitors, that would indeed be useful to the any forum members considering visiting your area of BC to camp in hammocks. My own reading on the subject is that such data does not exist.

My own take is that the percentage of people that use hammocks in the UK, US or Canada is tiny compared to tent campers, the chance of meeting a hammock camper is pretty small, especially if you yourself are not spending time on camp sites. This means that not seeing people in hammocks doesn't need a particular cause, such as bears and is more likely to do with where you look, who you meet, the type of camp sites you see, the type of land and why people are in it.

This makes for interesting reading, not specifically about hammocks though

Bear Attacks Increasing Worldwide

A French composer on a trip to Canadas Northwest Territories to record the sounds of nature was attacked in his tent in the middle of the night and killed…

cowboystatedaily.com

I was thinking the same as one of your points: how many people can hammock camp in polar bear country anyway? Or even in Grizzly territory which is often mountainous and has it’s own traditions which rarely include hammocks.

Interesting article but it leaves a few thins up in the air. Just what do they consider an “unprovoked” attack? And what constitutes a “predatory” attack? I know in the past few decades grizzly attacks in the mountain west have been more and more linked to the bears being attracted to gunshots as they‘ve learned it usually means fresh meat hitting the ground. That attraction often results in the bear attacking the hunter so the question becomes, “Is that attack:
a) unprovoked?
b) Predatory? (the bear isn’t necessarily preying on the human as such but it is there for feeding)

 

[C_Claycomb]

This would be a provoked attack:

A more common example would be a bear that has been shot and wounded by a hunter then turning on the people pursuing it.

Predatory, bear is looking to make a meal of the person.

Attacking a hunter to take possession of that hunter's kill would most likely be unprovoked and non-predatory. It would be competition/territorial.

 

[Robson Valley]

I've never said that I dislike hammock camping. Just that It's not the best option here.
Must be glorious not to be concerned in the least about bears.

Locally, the Black bears come into the village, particularly in the autumn. The big attraction is unpicked apple trees.
The Grizzly bears stay out of town.

Any bear sow with cubs is the biggest hazard to a walk in the forest now in spring when they are emerging from hibernation.

 

[santaman2000]

In most jurisdictions it’s illegal to hunt grizzlies or polar bears so I doubt a wounded one turning on the hunter is really all that common. Black bears aren’t known for being especially aggressive unless provoked although attacks here have been on the rise the last decade or two (I suspect due to more encounters as both the bear and human populations are increasing and there are simply more encounters than previously) At least twice a year in summer we get incidents of black bears in peoples yards in fairly suburban neighborhoods. And no, not just in new neighborhoods built recently on what you git think of as being the bear’s territory, but in old, long established neighborhoods as the bear population is also swelling and spreading.

These encounters are rarely violent here but rather usually result in the bear climbing a tree and waiting (often until after dark) to come down and leave the area. That said, I do remember one headline in the local newspaper 2 or 3 years ago when a bear was rummaging through trash cans on a city street in nearby Destin and attacked a passing jogger (or was it a bicyclist?)

Yes it’s rare, and yes, it does happen. Fortunately fatal encounters are even rarer with our native black bears. Year before last we had the first legal bear hunting season in over 3 decades and it was fairly successful. I forget how many permits were issued but all pernit holders knew there were two possible reasons the season would end:
1) The preset ending date, or
2) The target harvest number was reached
Whichever occurred first. In this case it was the 2nd reason and the season lasted less than a full weekend. Unfortunately too many of the public associate black bears with Hollywood stereotypes such as Gentle Ben and the season hasn’t been repeated since even though another harvest is desperately needed.

 

[Erbswurst]

Sounds like an interesting market niche:
Hammocks for bears, available in brown or white.

 

[Tengu]

I dont like bears.

Nor hammocks.

 

[Robson Valley]

We used to cold camp on goose hunting trips. No morning campfire, Coleman only and cold cereal.
Might have been a myth but wasn't my camp to set the tone.

That polar bear's unusual size made it newsworthy. Same, I suppose, as with Kodiak bears.
Unless somebody gets killed or badly mauled, bear encounters are not newsworthy events here.

Simple things matter. Kitchen garbage bag? Take it out in daylight, not after dark.
Garbage collection here is Friday mornings. Save everything in the house until Friday morning.

I used to have a big plastic replica of a Grecian urn. Flowers planted in it on my front doorstep.
Neighbor across the street watched a black bear sit on it and crushed it flat.