I have raccoons all over the place, and haven't ever had them try to invade the smoker, even when I smoked all night. Now I'm back to using a Big Chief, and can do a batch of fish in 12 hours, so confine my smoking to daylight hours and never have an animal problem. It probably helps that my smokers are only a few feet from my dog kennel, so critters don't get too close. I don't have bears, though, so can't answer that one.