I was always told the safest thing to do when hiking in bear country is make sure you're hiking with at least one person you can outrun.

[...smile...]

you don't have to be able to outrun your friends but make sure your close enough to trip one :)

Actually spraying yourself is a pretty good idea. If it's repellent to stop a charging bear, it's repellent enough to keep him from eating you. You will still be dead of a heart attack with your wet pants and your bell necklace, but your remains will be in pristine condition.

"Actually spraying yourself is a pretty good idea."

That's actually a really dumb idea. You won't be able to see or function with pepper spray in your ears and nose. Some stupid people have sprayed their tents with pepper spray thinking it would repel bears, when the reality is once it dries it's just like any other food item - it attracts bears.

It's not bug spray, for Pete's sake! Terrible idea! Don't do it! One false move, one stray gust of wind, and you will be blind, in pain and gasping for bretah for a good half-hour. It's the sting of it on contact that repels the bear, not any lingering scent.

thank you all for the good laugh (and great visuals that I will carry around all day in my head).

Ooops, I carried mine on the plane in my carryon backpack - 2 bottles no less.

Well....I don't know much about Grizzlies, but a sure-fire Black Bear repellent is human male urine. For some odd reason, female urine doesn't work quite as well.

So, if you're camping in Black Bear country, have all the guys "mark" their territory. Of course, this isn't a big help during the hiking part of the trip, unless you're willing to carry gallons and gallons of water along and you keep "re-filling" on the way.

Also, as others have said in this post, if you are actually charged, your "natural repellent" will most likely just release itself.

So now I know why my dad always insists on singing (badly) in the woods - it is to annoy the bears to keep them away! All this time he was protecting us and I just thought he was a dork - LOL.

If you see a bear of any kind up close and personal you may very well mark something besides the trail or your territory in the campsite.!!!

Oh Newbe and Weasel I must not have been clear. First you rub bacon grease all over yourself, then you douse your head in honey. Only then should you spray your bear spray on yourself. Finally,you make feeble attempts at humor until the bear walks away in disgust.

OK, shaz, now I get it! If you want to leave a beautiful corpse, go with the pepper spray. If you want to the bear to destroy all evidence of your having wet yourself before dying of a heart attack, go with the honey and bacon grease. Right? ;-)

I am just terrified of bears. The thought of a bear charging me... OMG.
I wonder if, aside from making plenty of noise, a air horn would be better than pepper spray. We used to use them in rodeos. Little can with a horn that makes one hell of a noise.
I would worry about the campsite at night. Even if you secure your stuff, they could come around.
Call me silly, but I am just so scared of bears I would not hike without a group.

Here's everything you need to know about bear safety - just click on Segment 2:

http://tinyurl.com/2yyz9t

What about carrying a big bell, like the ones in church bell choirs?

I can't tell if these are jokes!

The main reason people don't tend to carry air horns or big bells is that the goal is to warn the bears that humans are in the vicinity, which can be accomplished with a small bell or singing or clapping your hands. Black bears prefer to avoid humans, so this usually works during a hike. As for the campsite, securing foodstuffs and remnants is the key to keeping them away.

Grizzlies, while not man eaters per se, are more aggressive and have larger territories. You use the same strategies to keep them away, but they're the ones you play dead for if they attack.

Sometimes, you can ward off a bear attack by acting like a nut. But then, of course, you have to worry about being attacked by squirrels…..

And then there are the mountain lions ....

Okay, all jokes aside for now….male urine is a known deterrent for black bears. Many hikers I know "mark their territory" at night before camping, and it works. I even have neighbors in the mountains who insist on having their husbands (as discretely as possible) protect their backyards and decks using this method.

The husbands see this as a great excuse to imbibe in several beers or glasses of wine each night, and tend to not argue about doing their part to keep the family safe.

I've had many "close-up" encounters with black bears throughout my life. I've been within a few feet of them in the Great Smokies, the Adirondack mountains and all over forests in the northeast. I've never had one bad experience. I've witnessed a mother teaching her cub how to climb the rock face of a cliff and once watched a bear couple frolicking gleefully in a patch of ripe berries near the Delaware Water Gap on the New Jersey side of the river. Never once did I feel threatened or frightened.

Camping in a lean-to on a trail near Lake Placid, I did get to watch a bear tear a backpack apart. A bunch of drunken college students had hiked in after dark and set their tents up near the lean-to for safety. They dropped their packs on the ground and collapsed inside the tents. As soon as they were asleep, a female black bear strolled into their campsite, sniffed around and then sat down next to a brand new backpack. She steadied it with her back paws, then used her forearms to rip one of the side pockets off. A full bag of Chips-A-Hoy fell out. She tore it open, guzzled all of the cookies and then wandered off in search of more food.

So…the moral of this story is….don't keep food in or near your tent when you are in bear country. They have a keen sense of smell, and will be too tempted to ignore sweets and meat of any kind. Don't go to sleep with a Slim Jim in your pocket. Store your supplies safely away from your campsite. We used to suspend them from ropes that were attached to two different trees. That way, if the bear smelled the food and uprooted one of the trees, it would usually give up when the food didn't drop.

A friend used to bring peach brandy with him on hikes. He would put a bit of it in a metal plate a good distance from the campsite, and claimed it would lure the bears to it and away from us. It seemed to work. We watched a bear guzzle it down one night, shudder a bit, then wander off down the trail. Of course, we'll never know if folks further downhill from us had an encounter with a drunken bear that night!

So….if you are hiking in bear country, and one does actually charge you, you might want to drop your pack if it's got meat in it. Hopefully the bear will stop to have a meal that doesn't somehow involve you, and you can make your escape.

If not, the "killer" bear will be easy to track later on. He'll be the one wearing the fancy backpack.

hawaiiantraveller...is that .450 marlin to shoot yourself as the bear charges you????? hah