What should I do if I am in a tent, have been sleeping, and was woken up by the sounds of some large animal quite close to the tent? Just hearing some branches broken by presumably something large.
At this point I don't know what animal it is, but presumably it can be either a brown bear or a wild boar. Maybe a wolf. Not sure if its possible to differentiate between them without seeing it, just by the sounds of walking, broken branches.
I also don't know exactly how close is the animal to the tent, and if its thinking about charging the tent or not.
The main question is: do I stay in the tent, or go out to investigate / pepper spray, try to scare the animal off? If staying in the tent is preferred, keep quiet, or make noise?
Obviously if I am to go out, I would make noise, but if I stay, should I keep quiet, hoping to make the animal think that the tent is just an uninteresting, inanimate object? I have no food in the tent and changed my outer clothing after cooking, so I have no reason to believe the animal will find my smell interesting. Unless un-brushed teeth after eating meat some hours earlier may be a problem (no meat residue in the teeth).
Assuming the only things I have are: pepper spray (260 gram / 9 oz can, Sabre or UDAP) and a flashlight. No guns or anything like that.
The territory I am asking about is Europe, where there are brown bear only (no black bears), but they are not Grizzly, just European brown bears. This is for example about Scandinavia or Carpathian Mountains.
This is NOT about Russia and super-hungry bears in Siberia, this is a territory with relatively available sources of food, like fruits on trees around, so the animal would not be so desperate for food to seek humans as prey.