ChileMass
Active member
My family has been camping in the Bartlett NH area for several years and had heard the occasional story of bears visiting the campground. My wife has been kinda concerned about this for a while, and started talking about bears and necessary bear-precautions about a week prior to our trip.
And of course for several years I have been the guy down-playing any talk of bears. I had never heard or seen one and in 7 years of going to this campsite, we had never had any trouble. We diligently put away all food and garbage every night in our van, and have never had so much as a raccoon bother us.
So of course this past weekend a bear visited us 2 nights in a row!! Our site was untouched, but several of our "neighbors" on adjacent sites had some damage and had some food eaten. Again - we put all our stuff away juat about at dark each night, but the knucklehead college guys next to us left a picnic table full of food, old chip bags and beer containers which the bear apparently liked a lot. He went through 3 other sites next to ours before moving off down the river sites to wreck a couple of screen houses and freak out several more camping families. Car horns blared out all over the campground at 4AM, and we heard a couple kids shot bottle rockets at the bear in an attempt to scare him off. The staff came around later and told us banging pans together would be sufficient, btw.
Things settled down, but the bear remained a topic of conversation all day. And that night just after dark (around 9PM), we spotted the bear across the river from our sites, looking our way. But when my buddy shined a big flashlight at him, the bear froze in place (BUSTED!) and then wandered off.
So be careful out there in the woods! Keep your food and garbage either in a secure vehicle or hung up high in a tree to minimize your attraction factor. I never expected to see a bear hanging around a relatively busy campground, but there he was.
And of course for several years I have been the guy down-playing any talk of bears. I had never heard or seen one and in 7 years of going to this campsite, we had never had any trouble. We diligently put away all food and garbage every night in our van, and have never had so much as a raccoon bother us.
So of course this past weekend a bear visited us 2 nights in a row!! Our site was untouched, but several of our "neighbors" on adjacent sites had some damage and had some food eaten. Again - we put all our stuff away juat about at dark each night, but the knucklehead college guys next to us left a picnic table full of food, old chip bags and beer containers which the bear apparently liked a lot. He went through 3 other sites next to ours before moving off down the river sites to wreck a couple of screen houses and freak out several more camping families. Car horns blared out all over the campground at 4AM, and we heard a couple kids shot bottle rockets at the bear in an attempt to scare him off. The staff came around later and told us banging pans together would be sufficient, btw.
Things settled down, but the bear remained a topic of conversation all day. And that night just after dark (around 9PM), we spotted the bear across the river from our sites, looking our way. But when my buddy shined a big flashlight at him, the bear froze in place (BUSTED!) and then wandered off.
So be careful out there in the woods! Keep your food and garbage either in a secure vehicle or hung up high in a tree to minimize your attraction factor. I never expected to see a bear hanging around a relatively busy campground, but there he was.
