In a message dated 5/28/2002 11:52:27 AM Pacific Daylight Time, Rick.Sylvia_at_ferguson.com writes: > 1. How and where and in what do you store your food while camping? > > 2. What are the less expensive alternatives to commercial bear bags, yet > are still effective? > > 3. Anyone make their own bear bag and care to share the instructions? You might want to pick up a copy of Steven Hererro's, Bear Attacks: Their Cause and Avoidance. It details excellent information on camping in bear country. That said, I would never store food in a kayak unless I was certain that no bears (black or brown) frequented the area. In black bear country, I usually hang it by a center mounted carabiner with 2 ea 50 ft pieces of line. I throw it over a branch and tie it individually to separate trees. Black bears are known to have defeated all forms of food hanging, so in areas where they are protected the bear cans come along. Recently, Backpacker Magazine tested the kevlar bear bag. The results were predictable: One zoo grizzly left it alone after not finding his way into it, but a second one shredded it. I use the Garcia Machine Works bear can. These are widely used by the National Park Service in Alaska and Washington. Heavy and spendy at $85.00 but one 8.5 x 12.5 inch can should last 5 days for dehydrated food conneisseur! The GMW cans are not waterproof. Use a garbage bag or dry bag for that function or make sure your food is adequately protected. There are others on the market so look around. Bear can manufacturers have figured out that a large can that is too wide to bite over cannot be bitten through. Nor can a high strength can be smashed. Lastly, all surfaces are flush so that claws have nothing to penetrate. Homemade cans I'm sure have worked but... Whatever scented products you bring into bear country need to be stored together and out of reach of bears. That includes toiletries, chapstick, suncream, that powerbar wrapper in your pfd's left pocket, The empty gatorade bottles in your cockpit, all of it. It's not the fear of bears that prompts my precautions but the fear of being away from it all with a devoured food supply. Bears habituated to human food will inevitably contact humans, possibly harrass or hurt them and will get shot by vigilant campers or the authorities. As they say, a fed bear is a dead bear. Read up on it and you'll find the best solution for you. Racoons are worse pests than bears, so consider them in your food defence preparations. Good luck! Rob G's humble opinion *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Tue May 28 2002 - 14:51:22 PDT
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