how do you keep mice from your stuff?

[robby]

(love this forum!)
greetings, noble thru-hikers!

i plan on mostly tent camping as far from the shelters as i can manage, while still in the designated areas. i've read that many of you "sleep with your food", many hang "when hooks are provided", many hang using the traditional "pct method" from trees, some only hang in known "high bear activity" areas (shenendoah, new jersey...), some use ursack, ursack minor... etc.

i plan to eat far from my tent, and am wondering if i seal up my "odor-ables" in some sort of dry bag, and sleep with them, if that seems ok? (i always get this silly image in my mind of folks having their food bag in their sleeping bag) how many of you have had problems with that method in your own experience?

mostly just wondering what gear to purcha$e, and what i will really do when it's raining, cold, and dark, after a 25-miler, and there aren't any easy trees to hang from, and there are no hooks available (which don't really seems to be good protection from mice anyway!).

thanks very much for any advice!

robby

[Gambit McCrae]

I have only hiked about 2000 miles, but in that I have had probably 30-40 nights in shelters, and never not once has a mouse been an issue of any kind. Even less of a problem while tent camping in that I don't even see them. I would say if you make an effort to not be a slob, you will be just fine

[MuddyWaters]

mostly just wondering what gear to purcha$e, and what i will really do when it's raining, cold, and dark, after a 25-miler, and there aren't any easy trees to hang from, and there are no hooks available (which don't really seems to be good protection from mice anyway!).

thanks very much for any advice!

robby

You keep food in tent, and go to sleep.
Maybe mr. Mouse chews into your tent, maybe he dont. In any case, he wont eat enough to matter.

You cant worry about things outside of your control

[bigcranky]

I've slept in shelters, and in my tent, and out under the stars. I've hung my food inside the shelter, outside from a tree, on a bear pole, on bear cables, slept with it, etc. Probably a couple of hundred nights total. Only had a handful of nights when mice got into my food bag -- mostly early on when it was hung on a bear cable in GA (may have been flying squirrels) and once in Vermont tenting behind a shelter. Overall not a big deal, and as Muddy says, don't worry about what you can't control.

I do find the Aloksak OP (odor proof) bags seem to make a difference. Since the GA bear cable incidents in '03, I've been keeping my food inside one, and the most recent VT incident happened when I couldn't get all my food in the OP Sack. Yeah, anecdote is not data, but this is good enough for me.

[dudeijuststarted]

hang your food properly and you should be fine. another tip is to open the pockets on your pack so they don't chew through it looking for crumbs.

[Slo-go'en]

Mice have an uncanny ability to zero in on the grop bag and eat the nuts, their preferred food. They also seem to like chocolate. They leave pretty much everything else alone unless really desperate.

I've never had mice in my food when hung from a tree, they just don't think to climb trees. Squirrels do and can sometimes be a problem. I've found that bright colored sacks attract more attention then dark colored sacks, but can be harder to find if you don't remember exactly where you hung the food!

Most shelters where bears are not a problem have tin cans (usually tuna) with a rope passed through the middle as a mouse guard. These are mostly effective, but some mice have learned to take a flying leap to the get to the bag instead of going down the rope.

But will all the nights I've spent in the woods (and there have been a lot of them) the only problem I've had was when forgetting a candy wrapper in the mesh side pocket of my pack overnight while the pack was in the shelter. I've got some damaged mesh pockets due to that.

[Heliotrope]

Keep in mind that if you sleep in designated areas other hikers may have different ideas about how to store and prepare food. I had a woman set up next to me and cooked pasta and veggies right in the vestibule of her tent filling the interior with food odors. You may have to let go of the things you can't control or sleep in undesignated sites away from everyone. I've had bears take my food bags when I didn't know how to hang them properly and have had them make failed attempts when I learned how to do it right. So when I am camped with other hikers who don't hang or poorly hang I figure I have a better chance of keeping my food.


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[MuddyWaters]

You can also leave tp out, and they will spend night building nest with it. Possibly in your shoes

[4runner]

Staying away from the shelters and often used tent sites, always good advice.

[X-Pat]

You keep food in tent, and go to sleep.
Maybe mr. Mouse chews into your tent, maybe he dont. In any case, he wont eat enough to matter.

You cant worry about things outside of your control

I wouldn't be too worried about the amount of my food Mr. Mouse eats, I would be more worried about what he chews through on his way to my food.
All the smellies in the bear bag - worst case scenario is a hole in a low-cost bag instead of in my tent, backpack, etc.

[Dogwood]

#1 thing that I do to avoid meeses is not camp where other humans tend to camp. Ever notice how many problems occur in areas of high human activity?

[Christoph]

I hung my food most of time and also my trash in a plastic bag. They didn't bother me too much, but when I stayed in the shelter they were running all over. Didn't really bother me though. I had 1 try to get in my tent one night but I had my food in there with me (I was real tired that day) so I smacked him off the tent and never heard from him again. I put my tent up fairly close to the shelter though. Overall, they don't bother you much if you take the right precautions, but you don't have to overdo/overthink it.

[aka.cyberman]

Play it safe and Hang It. Emphasis on the word Safe. 100 - 200 feet from your tent and water source. Form a triangle of Campsite, Water & Food. Don't cook by your camp, if you are staying at the campsite overnight. Don't slop food on your clothes. I know that's being anal & overkill, but I don't like critters of any size creeping around me while I sleep. They are curious by nature in their constant quest to eat. You'll figure it out.

[Sarcasm the elf]

Stayingg away from shelters and Hiking with a dog is probably the single best method of critter deterrence I've found.

[johnnybgood]

No sleeping in shelters . Sleep with your food in your tent...with it in a secured food bag.

[Longboysfan]

Stupid thought maybe.
Anyone ever bring a mouse trap with them?

Then just leave it in the shelter?

[Trance]

Never once had mice problems in shelters or tenting on any part of the trail.

Had some twenty something girls complaining in spence shelter that they heard mice in the walls... but I never saw them or had them mess with anything.

People like to embellish the truth of the trail sometimes.

[Lone Wolf]

how do i keep mice from my stuff? i sleep with all my stuff in a tent way away from shelters and such. 30 years never had a mouse chew through my tent

[Harrison Bergeron]

I always used my tent unless it looked like serious rain. The guy I was hiking with slept with his food and he complained about them all the time. The one time I slept with my food, I heard them running up between my tent fly and bug net occasionally, but they didn't get in. Other than that, I never heard any mice near my tent.

The only shelter I stayed in where I didn't hear mice scurrying across my groundsheet all night was Long Branch, and probably only because it's so new that it's caulked to deprive them of hiding places. At Wesser they were so bad that you could see them scurrying across the ridge beam and they would stop and lean way over to get a good look at you. At one point during the night a mouse ran across my feet and startled me and I bounced him off the wall. The reason it was so bad there was because some idiot got rid of his 2-pound bag of cous-cous by leaving it on the the table with a sign that said "trail magic". More like "mice magic". We burned it.

I always hung my food, but in the shelters, I would hang my pack from a nail or one of those hangars with a tuna can and they never got into anything.

You're going to see lots of mice, but it's mostly just a yuck factor if you use a little common sense.

[Casey & Gina]

Carry a couple mousetraps and set them up with peanut butter outside your tent. Collect any trapped mice in your cookpot, boiling them up the next morning for breakfast. If you fancy a bear bonding experience, carry along the mice to your next campsite and strew them about near your tent.