Bear Damage! - Alternative Siding Ideas?

[azapplewhite]

Have had a 30' Diameter Pacific Yurt as a weekend "off-grid cabin" in the Sierra Nevada mountains for 15 years and it has been fantastic. I NEVER store food in the yurt and never have any trash or garbage around. I also always leave a few open bottles of Pin-Sol whenever I leave because allegedly bears hate the smell but this may be urban legend! This worked great for 15 years but I think climate change is putting more stress on the bears.

A bear broke through the french doors 3 weeks ago so I welded up some channels to protect the door with 3/4" plywood but last night, the bear pulled the siding down but thankfully stopped at the "trellis" siding.

I'm thinking about replacing the canvas siding with metal siding like Galvalume corrugated metal or something similar? Anyone out there have any experience with this or have alternative suggestions?

[TSRalex]

I would suggest to invest into an electric bear fence with an small solar power system.....

[Bob Rowlands]

Well that sucks.

Bear fence is good idea. I've seen those actually repel bear in a few yt vids.

Flexible metal siding sounds like a great idea. Pull the roof cover up. Remove the rest of the exterior wall cover. Screw/tie wire on the panels. Simple enough.

When I had my yurt up I thought about really securing it by wrapping chain link fence around the outside of the perimeter wall, under the cover, and tie wiring it in place. Never did it though.

I never thought about flexible metal paneling, and my initial thought is that just might be the best solution to keep bear claws off. Really sorry about the yurt. Good luck.

[HawaiiYurts]

YOWZA! Guess those bearproof yurt shirts are out 👀 Looks like you did a good job for a long run. Some bears are more curious than others. I wonder if a radio playing inside on talk radio would spook them... hmm.

[Jafo]

I second the electric fence. You can buy them reasonably cheap.

You may want to pick up hunting too.

[Bob Rowlands]

10-4 on bear hunting. Unfortunately if you live in CA Sierras it just might get banned before long. I think bear hunting is known to cause cause cancer in CA.

[skihuckster]

Thanks for the picture. That's nuts!

This idea is a little off the wall, but if you have cell service, you could get a game cam that texts you when it senses/shoots something going on and I think some of them have a 2-way function where you could activate a horn or similar to scare the bear away.

Still can't get over how the crocheted wall connection just unzipped like that.

Sure one of your friends didn't play a prank and stash some honey in there?