You should be fine, although black bears are strong enough to tear open car doors. Your best bet I suppose is putting the cooler in the trunk. When I camp I usually hang my food. Keep nothing that smells interesting in your tent. Deodorant, soap, toothpaste, that shirt you used to wipe your hands with if you gut a fish etc. Oh btw this is what bear scat looks like.
As others have mentioned blacks typically don’t attack humans, but if they do. Don’t play dead that’s for grizzlies, fight for your life. But statistically the most dangerous part of your camping trip as long as your not evil kenievel out there is going to be the drive in your car on the way to the camp site.
The classic strategy is play-action. Fake a handoff into the line to draw the safety in and send your fastest receiver downfield for a long pass.
If you’re talking about ursa americanus, I strongly suggest that you don’t tease and yell at a sow with a pair of cubs from 15 yards away and, when she doesn’t respond, feel a growing sense of bravado and gradually move closer and closer until you’re about ten yards away and then start throwing sticks and rocks at her.
Black bears are potentially dangerous, with the chance of that potential being realized hovering between miniscule and none. You’re more likely to have a TREE! fall on you than be attacked by a bear.
If there are bear-proof boxes at the campsites, I would use them instead of my car for food storage. Bears have been known to damage cars to get at food, and they don’t generally have car insurance (or, if they do, they never leave their insurance information). If there aren’t bear-proof boxes, then ask the people in charge of the campground what you should do. If they say storing stuff in your car is OK, then bears are probably uncommon enough there that it is.
Grizzlies and polar bears can be described as godless (well, I don’t know of any studies of religion in bears) killing machines. Black bears can hurt you, but they won’t generally come after you unless you do something stupid. They’re more likely to break into your car or break into an improperly secured bear-proof box. The latter makes an unholy racket, often at 2 in the morning or so (bears are scofflaws when it comes to noise laws, same as they are with respect to car insurance laws), and is scary, but they’re not likely to hurt you. It’s not impossible that a black bear will hurt an adult human, but it is unlikely.
Black bears aren’t always black-colored. They can be brown or blonde, but that doesn’t make them brown bears or polar bears. Brown bears and polar bears are different species (though at least brown bears and polar bears can interbreed- not sure if either can with black bears), live in different places, and have different habits. I don’t think a polar bear could live in Michigan in the summer without air conditioning if it wanted to. There have been grizzlies in Michigan after the last ice age, but not in historic times.
I was there three weeks ago. I’ve been camping in porkies at least once a year for the last 25 years. I’ve only seen bear a handful of times. They almost always bolt the other way, usually before you even see them.
We did actually see bear on three different occasions on this past trip, but that was very unusual. All were sighted from the car while we were driving.
Make sure you check out the visitor’s center, its an excellent place to plan your hikes for the day. There are also park activities and group hikes that you might be interested in.
The bear I saw in the park was near the white pine extension campground.
Look, if a BEAR! wants you dead, there ain’t jack you can do about it. If you have your suspicions, then you might as well just dive into a wood chipper right now. You’re done. Fact.
Bears can be dangerous, and always deserve respect if you encounter them. Learn the rules of keeping a clean camp and what to if you should happen to meet up with one.
But, in 30 years of hiking in bear country and having probably 10-12 encounters with black bears (no grizzlies), I’ve never felt even remotely threatened with one exception. Either the bears have run away as soon as we saw each other, or they completely ignored me and went about their business, or simply yelling got them to choose to go elsewhere. While they have the potential to be dangerous, for the most part they don’t want to have anything to do with you.
The exception was a bear in the Adirondaks who was a regular camp robber. He was making the rounds of campsites and got our food hang. After chasing him away and recovering the majority of our food he hung around a while, which was a rather uncomfortable feeling, seeing his glowing eyes reflected in our headlamps. But he went away (and got the food at the Boy Scout camp up the trail).
I’ve never carried bear spray or a gun. In the Daks I carry a bear canister because they are required and because they work, but I’d never carry one in the White Mountains of NH where bears aren’t that much of a problem. Yes, bears can damage cars looking for food but they rarely do, and only in areas where bears have become habituated to campers. If that’s true in the Porcupines then hopefully they already have bear boxes at the campsites.
I’m not afraid of bears here in Pittsburgh, but I want one of those! They hunt squirrels, too, and we’ve definitely had a problem with those.
The Karelian Bear Dog was presumably bred to hunt brown bears, not black bears. Black bears only live in North America.
Black bears are unlikely to try to come into your tent while you are sleeping, unless there is something in there that smells like food. They want your food, they don’t want to kill and eat you.
I was in the Porkies about 8-9 years ago, with a flock o’ young boy scouts on a week long backpacking trip. 30 minutes in from the trailhead on day 1, we spotted a small bear track in a muddy spot on the trail, and used that to warn the boys that there WERE bears around, and don’t get slack or lazy about hanging food and keeping anything that smells like food out of your tents, and all of that. The boys complied, and we never saw anything bear-related for the rest of the week.
I seem to remember that most campsites had a place to hand a bear bag somewhere nearby. It might be 100 or 200’ down a side trail, so you’ll have to go look for it. That’s all right - I might be wrong, but it sounds like you don’t really want a bear in camp any way.
One other thing - Lake of Clouds has leaches in it. If you go swimming there, check closely in all the nooks and crannies afterwards.
You might move on if you see bear scat. Bear and Javalina scat look a lot alike. Javalina scat usually has lots of rose hips in it. Bear scat often contains small bells and whistles.
