Our friend David Knapp over at The Trout Zone recently had some bear trouble in Smoky Mountain NP. He talks about it on his blog. Pretty scary stuff. If you ever plan to do any camping or backpacking in bear country (black, grizzly or both), you should read this cautionary tale. Please never, ever leave or bury trash in bear country. You’re not only putting yourself at risk but other campers as well. For that matter, you’re also putting the bears at risk. Bears that become accustomed to feeding on trash or handouts often must be put down due to the dangerous behaviors they develop. If you do plan to backpack in the Smokies, make sure you know the regulations. Pay particular attention to Rules 8 and 10. I’m planning a solo backpacking trip to Georgia at the end of May, and you can bet David’s story will be on my mind every time I hear a twig snap or something, who knows what, grunting outside my tent.
If you like to fly fish, you should be a regular reader of David’s blog. In my humble opinion, it’s one of the best out there. David’s quite a fisherman, and you can learn a lot from him. He covers a wide variety of water from tailwaters to mountains to warmwater creeks and ponds. Although he focuses on his home area up in Tennessee, he almost always takes a trip out West every year. And he never seems to fail to catch nice fish. His photos are some of the best you’ll find.
Insane has had some computer hiccups and hasn’t been able to edit the photos from our trip to the ponds I wrote about last week. Hopefully he’ll have them up on Friday. If not, I should have some material from a big group fishing trip we went on last Saturday which resulted in a tasty fish fry, even if I did do the frying.
Take care and stay safe,
Nathan
Nathan, thanks for spreading the word about packing all trash out of the backcountry…wish we could get everyone cleaning up after themselves…
What part of GA are you going to be backpacking in?
David,
Yeah, me too. I think most of the problem comes from people just not being knowledgeable about how to travel in the backcountry. It would probably be good if the Smokies required people to listen to a ranger presentation before backcountry travel, like they do in Yellowstone.
I sent you an email on where I’m backpacking. I’m holding to my fishermen’s policy of secrecy here, just in case I return with numerous photos of monster trout…lol.
Take care,
Nathan
Hi Nathan,
Haven’t popped in for a while so had to catch up on some of your posts, wow this sounded like a camping trip of note, I must say that when we going camping here we don’t have such excitement as our camping sites don’t really have such dangers, and are usually fenced in from larger animals, I watch a lot of movies and documentaries on Animal Planet etc about bears and such and they always mention how not to throw away food or bury it the best thing is to cook far from ones camp site, so that if a bear does come into your area its not that close to where one is sleeping avoiding potential encounters with them.
Regards
Amy