is there any food you would bring into your tent?

[terasec]

i will be tent camping in some pretty cold weather,
i never bring food of any kind in my tent,
but with the cold weather wondering if any hot beverage is acceptable,
what wouldnt attract the bears?
tea? broth? anything other than hot water?
even in winter, bears can still be active, and have seen many bear tracks near my camp in the middle of winter

[toedtoes]

Re: is there any food you would bring into your tent?

I can't think of any that would be "safe". Broth is definitely too strong of a scent and is too likely to stick around. Cocoa is another very strong scent. Tea is a possibility - maybe a weak cup of tea would be OK.

The other concern is when you would be drinking it in your tent. Drinking a cup of weak tea in the tent around 5 p.m. and then removing the cup might be OK, whereas I would drink it at 10 p.m. and then set it down and going to sleep.

[Mike]

Re: is there any food you would bring into your tent?

When I was a kid, we had a couple of shredded old tin cans that we brought everywhere in our Volkswagon camper. These cans were left over from some bears that went into the pup tent that my father was sleeping in. The tins of food were in a backpack that my father brought into his pup tent.

While my father was inside the tent, two big bears went into his old school canvast pup tent, pulled out his packpack, and tore the cans open to get the food inside. Dad saved those cans to show us how dangerous bears can be and why you never ever bring ANY food inside a tent.

If a bear can smell food through a steel can, they can and will smell the residue of cooking on your tent walls. They will smell that little peanut that is in the corner of your tent. They will smell that tiny smear of butter or that splash of soup. This is also true for food that you have in your clothing pockets or spilled on your clothes that you bring into your tent. Go with a trapper sometime and see how they bait animals with a tiny drop of stinky scent they wipe on a tree. Bears will dig up an entire fallen log to get a grub or two buried under the ground under the log! Half a Snickers bar inside your tent - and you think a sheet of nylon fabric is going to keep the bear out??

If you are in bear country, keep your food far away from your tent Some folks even keep food away from camp - choosing to store, cook, and eat food away from their camp.

Bears are beautiful creatures, but not so much when they are close enough for you to touch them with your big toe.