7 Ways to Keep Animals Out of Your Campsite

When you go camping in an area where some critters might appear in your area, you need to know how to keep animals away.

It’s easy enough to keep animals out of your home, but when you go camping outdoors, you’re in their home. If you want to ensure your campsite stays critter-free, you’ll need to perform some preventive measures and do a few things that might help make your campsite less appealing to hungry bears, sneaky raccoons, or other wild animals looking for an easy meal among your things.

1. Keep your food packed in zipper bags

One of the most important preventive measures you must take while camping is closing up your food and keeping the smell inside the zipper bag. This means only getting food out when you’re ready to eat, keeping your food put away when you’re done eating, and using lots of zipper bags to store and carry your food. If an animal can’t smell your food, it won’t come searching for your food. By nature, most animals try to avoid humans unless they smell food.

2. Don’t worry about smelling bad while camping

You might want to clean up and bathe at your campsite, which is fine but unnecessary. If you bring cologne, deodorant, or soap, try to make sure these items are unscented. In reality, when outside in nature, you can smell like nature, and most people won’t notice or care. It might not sound appealing, but if you smell like the great outdoors, most animals won’t come searching. If you want to keep animals away from your camp, don’t use scented items. Animals will come and be curious about what they smell.

3. Hide your food locations

Although you’re not facing Yogi Bear out in the wilderness, animals do have the ability to learn and can soon recognize that a cooler, cardboard cereal boxes, or grocery bags are where they can find food. Unless you’ve created your own campsite from scratch, you’re not likely the first campers at the site. This means animals have had a chance to learn from other campers. Keep your food in the car, under blankets, and put it away. Don’t even leave your cooler out in the open.

4. Keep your fire burning, even during the day

Fire is something discovered and utilized by humans, not animals. Most animals are afraid of fire and won’t come near one. Even when it’s hot outside, it’s a good idea to keep a fire burning to ensure animals don’t want to come into your camp. Before you allow a fire to burn all night, you need a good fire pit that can keep the fire under control. You don’t want to burn down the forest while trying to keep animals away from your camp.

5. Turn on the music, especially at night

Most people will tell you leaving a fire unattended and burning is a bad idea. Fires can be unpredictable. Another way to keep your campsite animal-free is to play some music. Even low-volume classical music played at night while you sleep will keep animals out of your area. If it’s quiet, some animals will think the humans are gone and will come to check out the area and look for food.

6. Trash must go right away

Your trash from your meal preparations contains food residue and can be attractive to animals. Although they might not get much out of a meat or cheese wrapper, they don’t know this until they open the trash bag and investigate. Try to put your trash and prepare your meals away from your sleeping areas. Some camps where animals are often present have locking trash cans that are made to keep animals out of them. These are the best places to store your trash and keep animals away from your camp.

7. The only unnatural scent you need

Something that’s a little counterintuitive that actually works is the use of dryer sheets while camping. Bring an unopened box of these dryer sheets and put them all around your campsite. For some reason, the smell of these items often sends most animals away from campsites. These items have even been known to work as mosquito deterrents, making them extra useful. This is the only unnatural scent you want with you. If you really need to smell better, turn a couple of dryer sheets into your camp deodorant.

These seven tips could help keep animals away from your camp and make your experience in the outdoors much more pleasant.