Another explanation for food bags being taken by bears?

[HooKooDooKu]

The North American Bear Center has a great web page with science-based information on bears, with an emphasis on black bears. Check out this page from their Myths and Misconceptions sections about why human-habituated bears are NOT more likely to attack humans.

https://bear.org/myth-when-bears-los...ely-to-attack/

I never said the bears accustom to humans are more likely to "attack". After all, habituated to humans or not, bears want the same thing... easy access to food.
When they become habituated to your presence, it becomes more difficult (if not impossible) to drive them away.

So if you sleep with your food in an area populated with bears habituated to humans, your odds of either loosing your food, or getting injured while a bear tries to get your food goes up.

[Tipi Walter]

If a backpacker is really paranoid about bear activity he/she could carry this 3.1 lb kit---along with a bunch of AA batteries.

https://www.bearwatchsystems.com/

Screenshot 2021-12-21 at 12-48-40 Bearwatch Wildlife Deterrent System — Bearwatch Systems - Elec.jpg

[JNI64]

If a backpacker is really paranoid about bear activity he/she could carry this 3.1 lb kit---along with a bunch of AA batteries.

https://www.bearwatchsystems.com/

Screenshot 2021-12-21 at 12-48-40 Bearwatch Wildlife Deterrent System — Bearwatch Systems - Elec.jpg

Knowing me I would forget I put it up and go out in the middle of the night and pee on it and electrocute myself. Than the bear will come along and eat everything, including me!

[appstate_mj]

Hi all. I have enjoyed reading this thread and have gathered some good information from it.

I have a question that we will be obvious to many of you, but I have never used a bear canister. I am planning to get one for my upcoming section hike in May. Some places I will be staying do not have cables or boxes or poles; some part in the area I am going requires bear canisters.

My question is, HOW do you use it at night? As in where you do put it? It seems from what I have read that you go the recommended distance from where you are sleeping and just put it on the ground and leave it? Is that correct?

This seems odd to me. It seems to me that this would be an easy way to lose your food; as in a bear or other animal could come and mess with it at night and roll it who knows where.

Thanks for the answers to a very obvious sounding question; but I want to use it correctly as it will not do me any good to get it if I do not know the proper way to use it. Thanks, MJ

[Montana]

Hi all. I have enjoyed reading this thread and have gathered some good information from it.

I have a question that we will be obvious to many of you, but I have never used a bear canister. I am planning to get one for my upcoming section hike in May. Some places I will be staying do not have cables or boxes or poles; some part in the area I am going requires bear canisters.

My question is, HOW do you use it at night? As in where you do put it? It seems from what I have read that you go the recommended distance from where you are sleeping and just put it on the ground and leave it? Is that correct?

This seems odd to me. It seems to me that this would be an easy way to lose your food; as in a bear or other animal could come and mess with it at night and roll it who knows where.

Thanks for the answers to a very obvious sounding question; but I want to use it correctly as it will not do me any good to get it if I do not know the proper way to use it. Thanks, MJ

Find a spot about 100 yards from your camp and leave the canister on the ground. If possible, find a depression and leave the canister at the bottom so that a bear has to make it roll uphill. Lacking a depression, find a large flat area. Don't place it at the top of a hill! Do not tie the canister down, this could give purchase to the bear and allow it to break into the canister. If you own the canister (rather than renting it), you might want to paint some bright colors on it to aid in locating it in the morning.

[No Match]

I didn't see it in the article but I wonder if they studied bears who were starving hungry and a human was holding or sleeping with food to see if they would attack?

I never forget that the man killed & dismembered/eaten at BC 82 in the Smokies was number 69 killed by black bears in the US. Cananda is MUCH higher. Never forget. History is amazing at proving what people turn to when 'they' get hungry. What do you think a hungry black bear will do? You can't ask the guy at BC 82.

[Odd Man Out]

...you go the recommended distance from where you are sleeping and just put it on the ground and leave it? Is that correct? This seems odd to me. It seems to me that this would be an easy way to lose your food; as in a bear or other animal could come and mess with it at night and roll it who knows where.

I think the answer is in the original post in this thread, which was that bears use visual cues and intelligence in addition to smell. Where canisters are used by everyone, bears learn that they can't open them so leave them alone.

[Five Tango]

Find a spot about 100 yards from your camp and leave the canister on the ground. If possible, find a depression and leave the canister at the bottom so that a bear has to make it roll uphill. Lacking a depression, find a large flat area. Don't place it at the top of a hill! Do not tie the canister down, this could give purchase to the bear and allow it to break into the canister. If you own the canister (rather than renting it), you might want to paint some bright colors on it to aid in locating it in the morning.

I put reflective tape on mine which makes it like a lighthouse in the wee hours of the morning.From past experience it serves as a really comfortable but heavy stool which also keeps out weather,rodents,and other creatures.

[HooKooDooKu]

Find a spot about 100 yards from your camp and leave the canister on the ground. If possible, find a depression and leave the canister at the bottom so that a bear has to make it roll uphill. Lacking a depression, find a large flat area. Don't place it at the top of a hill! Do not tie the canister down, this could give purchase to the bear and allow it to break into the canister. If you own the canister (rather than renting it), you might want to paint some bright colors on it to aid in locating it in the morning.

100 yards is a bit extreme.

Instructions from National Parks web sites tend to be very conservative, yet the website for Yosemite National Park (where bear canisters are REQUIRED) says "25 to 50 feet away from your campsite".

The general idea is that you simply need a "safe" distance from the bear while the bear tries to figure how to get into the canister (and hopefully fails).
Actually, the hope for areas where bears and bear canisters are common is that the bears will learn they can't get into the canisters and simply leave them alone the next time they see them.

Rather than placing the canister far away, some people like to keep it close by and place things like rocks or cook pots on top of the canister.
The idea is that if a bear starts to mess with it in the middle of the night, the noise will wake you up and you have a chance to try to scare the bear off.

Otherwise, everything Montana describes is spot on.

Here's a link to the Yosemite National Park website with instructions for bear canisters.
https://www.nps.gov/yose/planyourvis...rcanisters.htm

[FollowMrMuir]

Ahhhhh, nothing says "sweet wilderness" like surrounding your tent with an electric fence.

[martinb]

Hi all. I have enjoyed reading this thread and have gathered some good information from it.

I have a question that we will be obvious to many of you, but I have never used a bear canister. I am planning to get one for my upcoming section hike in May. Some places I will be staying do not have cables or boxes or poles; some part in the area I am going requires bear canisters.

My question is, HOW do you use it at night? As in where you do put it? It seems from what I have read that you go the recommended distance from where you are sleeping and just put it on the ground and leave it? Is that correct?

This seems odd to me. It seems to me that this would be an easy way to lose your food; as in a bear or other animal could come and mess with it at night and roll it who knows where.

Thanks for the answers to a very obvious sounding question; but I want to use it correctly as it will not do me any good to get it if I do not know the proper way to use it. Thanks, MJ

I place my bareboxer no more than around 50' from my tent in heavy bushes/scrub/etc. If something tries to mess with it during the night, it will make noise and then my headlamp lights it up. FYI, the bareboxer/garcia is designed to minimize straight rolling with tapered ends. I've had one bear try to get in mine and it only went about 10 or so feet from where I placed it.

[cmoulder]

I place my bareboxer no more than around 50' from my tent in heavy bushes/scrub/etc. If something tries to mess with it during the night, it will make noise and then my headlamp lights it up. FYI, the bareboxer/garcia is designed to minimize straight rolling with tapered ends. I've had one bear try to get in mine and it only went about 10 or so feet from where I placed it.

Also a good idea to put some of the 3M reflective tape on it.

[peakbagger]

Electric fences around campsites in polar bear territory is pretty well standard these days. Even with an electric fence, a guy from Maine got pulled out of a tent a few years ago.

A friend went to lecture by a couple who kayaked Alaskas entire coast. Some of the areas they paddled had very high bear populations. Their approach was pick an area with several small islands. Cook on one island, store the food and all cooking clothing on another and sleep in completely separate outfit on a third island. Everything was packed in separate dry bags.

[sketcher709]

My question is, HOW do you use it at night? As in where you do put it? It seems from what I have read that you go the recommended distance from where you are sleeping and just put it on the ground and leave it? Is that correct?

This seems odd to me. It seems to me that this would be an easy way to lose your food; as in a bear or other animal could come and mess with it at night and roll it who knows where.

Well, if you are unlucky enough you might have to look for it for a while. That's why you don't set it close to any large drop off's where you might see it but not be able to retrieve it.

I put a tile gps tracker in mine. I doubt it would be accurate enough to be useful but eh you never know. I notice when I look at the tile location from my house sometimes my phone places it across the street or various places on my property. So, it is definitely not going to lead me right to it but at least I'll have the psychological benefit of knowing its still in the neighborhood. I have considered taping it on the outside of the canister so that I would be able to hear the audible alert but one would have to be pretty close by to hear it....maybe I'll look to see if there is one with a with a louder alert....

[HankIV]

Used an Ursack this past season on AT thru. Wasn’t tested, at least by bears. Used opsacks, but I’m sure there was food smell on Ursack. I can’t image mice didn’t try it a few times.

Did use bear boxes and cables if the were available.

[GlitterHiker]

Second thought a motion sensor might be nice on a tent or tarp that emits noise and light for anything that comes around you in the middle of the night.

A few years ago, I stayed 10 nights at an AirBnb "cabin" on property adjacent to the Blue Ridge Parkway in Asheville, NC. The owner had a motion sensor on the "cabin", set for larger animals (i.e. bears), not the chipmunks, squirrels, etc. I don't know the range of the sensor, but that sucker went off every 45 minutes. The brightest light would fill the "cabin"; I barely got any sleep during my visit. (Ended up napping during the day & having to reduce my hiking time ...)

[PatmanTN]

The ATC Sweat crews often use electric fences in the GSMP, usually around the group cook area (never seen them use one big enough to put tents inside). Though, to be honest, they have told me that sometimes a bear gets past them anyway (happened at the Cosby Knob crew camp just south of the shelter, back in 2010 as I recall). But in my experience, the Cosby bears are educated, acclimated to people, and persistent. That was the first place I ever saw a bear raise up and shake the cables to try and get food bags to fall off.

[HooKooDooKu]

The ATC Sweat crews often use electric fences in the GSMP, usually around the group cook area (never seen them use one big enough to put tents inside). Though, to be honest, they have told me that sometimes a bear gets past them anyway (happened at the Cosby Knob crew camp just south of the shelter, back in 2010 as I recall). But in my experience, the Cosby bears are educated, acclimated to people, and persistent. That was the first place I ever saw a bear raise up and shake the cables to try and get food bags to fall off.

Came across a crew along the Deep Creek trail that had most of an entire Camp site cordoned off with those electric fences. Was sort of a surprise to see a bunch of weed whackers hanging from the bear cables.
I've been warned about bears shaking the bear cables, so my food bag is attached to the bear cables with a carabiner clipped to the loop rather than just hanging by the hooks. But I've yet to witness a bear shaking the cables.
But Cosby Knob has been the campsite I've had the most "in camp" bear encounters in GSMNP.