How to Avoid Dangerous Wildlife While Camping

Almost every serious wildlife encounter starts one of two ways: an animal is surprised at close range, or it has learned that people mean food. Both are largely preventable.

Make noise

Especially near water, in thick vegetation, around blind corners, and where a stream is loud enough to mask your approach. Talk, sing, clank something. Most large animals want to avoid you and will if given the chance.

Bells are less effective than voices — a human voice carries the specific information that you are a person.

Store food away from where you sleep

This is the one people skip on short trips, and it is the one that causes repeat problems at popular sites.

• Keep food, rubbish, toothpaste and anything scented out of the tent.
• Store it well away from where you sleep — in a bear canister, hung, or in a vehicle where that is the local practice.
• Cook away from your tent, and clean up thoroughly.

One large bag for all food means one thing to secure.

If you meet something large

• Do not run. It triggers pursuit in most species.
• Back away slowly, facing it, speaking calmly.
• Make yourself look large.
• Never come between an animal and its young, or an animal and its food.
• Give it a clear escape route — a cornered animal is a different animal.

The important caveat

The correct response genuinely varies by species and region — what is right for one large mammal is wrong for another, and advice that circulates online is often confidently wrong for where you are standing.

Read the guidance for the specific area you are visiting. Land management agencies publish it, and it is short.

Choosing where to pitch

Where you put the tent does more than anything you do afterwards.

Avoid pitching directly on an animal trail — a narrow, worn line through vegetation is a road, and things will use it at night. Avoid berry patches, fruiting trees, and the immediate edge of water where animals come to drink. Avoid anywhere with obvious sign: droppings, tracks, scratched bark, or the remains of something’s meal.

Keep the tent upwind of the cooking area if you can, and put reasonable distance between where you cook, where you store food and where you sleep. On popular sites, use the food storage the site provides — it exists because the problem is real there.

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Do not feed anything, ever

This includes leaving scraps, tipping out washing-up water near camp, and the well-meant handful of crisps for the bold bird or the friendly fox.

An animal that learns people mean food stops being wary, starts approaching, and eventually becomes a problem animal — which usually ends with it being destroyed. The phrase used by rangers is blunt and accurate: a fed animal is a dead animal. It also makes the site more dangerous for whoever camps there next month.

At night

Keep a torch within reach, and use it before you leave the tent rather than after. Most night encounters are noise rather than threat: mice in the porch, deer moving through, a fox investigating.

If something is outside and you would rather it left, make yourself heard from inside — voice, a pot banged — rather than opening the door to look. Almost everything wants to leave, and the safest thing you can do is make leaving easy.

Do not keep food in the tent, including the snack in your jacket pocket and the toothpaste in your washbag. Mice will chew through fabric to reach either.

Snakes, briefly

Where snakes are present, most bites happen to hands and lower legs and a good share involve someone handling or trying to kill the animal.

The practical rules are simple: watch where you put hands and feet, especially on rock, in long grass and around log piles; step onto rocks rather than over them so you can see the far side; and never handle a snake, alive or apparently dead.

If someone is bitten: keep them calm and as still as possible, keep the limb below heart level, remove rings and watches before swelling starts, and get them to medical help as fast as you can. Do not cut, suck, apply ice or use a tourniquet — all of those do harm. Anti-venom and the correct treatment vary by species and region, so a description or a photograph taken from a safe distance is useful, but never take a risk to get one.

Smaller things, bigger problems

Statistically, ticks, mosquitoes, wasps and rodents cause far more trouble than any large mammal.

• Check for ticks daily, and remove them with fine tweezers, straight out, close to the skin.
• Know the signs of a serious allergic reaction — swelling of face, lips or throat, or breathing difficulty — and treat that as an emergency.
• Keep food sealed so rodents do not chew through your pack for it.

Quick answers

What wildlife is actually dangerous while camping? Statistically, ticks, mosquitoes, wasps and rodents cause far more trouble than large mammals — most “wildlife” risk at camp is small, not dramatic.

How do I keep animals away from my campsite? Keep food sealed and stored away from your tent so rodents and larger animals have no reason to investigate, and keep a clean camp generally.

What should I do if I find a tick on me? Remove it with fine tweezers, pulling straight out close to the skin, and check daily during any multi-day trip since ticks are often found late rather than immediately.

When is an animal encounter actually an emergency? Signs of a serious allergic reaction — swelling of the face, lips or throat, or difficulty breathing, usually from a sting — should be treated as an emergency regardless of how minor the initial encounter seemed.