[pct-l] Pee as bear deterrent?

[Kathi]

I always read MendoRider's posts. As I recall the experiment he was 
doing with the OPsacks was in his barn with mice and cheese and it was 
to protect his horse feed from rodents. I remember him saying it "might" 
work for bears too and he'd had bears walk past food filled OPsacks in 
camp, but he always used a bear canister in high bear territory.
Kathi

On 11/4/13 12:28 PM, Jim Marco wrote:
> Brick,
> 	Yeah, I read about it. But, I think the experiment was slightly flawed in the sense that food was NOT used. Smells are by volatile components evaporating into the air. Food smells have different volatile components that the tests used. They still could be fairly effective at reducing odors to the point of a bear detecting only "small food source, not worth it" type detection. Anyway, pee is only a message. Bears may sniff a bit, but it surly doesn't put them off. No telling what they learned from sniffing, though.
> 	My thoughts only . . .
> 		jdm
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: pct-l-bounces at backcountry.net [mailto:pct-l-bounces at backcountry.net] On Behalf Of Brick Robbins
> Sent: Monday, November 04, 2013 2:23 PM
> To: pct-l at backcountry.net
> Subject: Re: [pct-l] Pee as bear deterrent?
>
> On Mon, Nov 4, 2013 at 11:07 AM, Jim Marco <jdm27 at cornell.edu> wrote:
>> Anyway, Bears can pretty much "smell" food, regardless of how the
>> actual mechanism works and how they process the info. Estimates range
>> from 2 times to 50 times what a dog can smell.<
> In the experiment,  police dogs were able to locate stuff stored in opsacks, hidden inside closed lockers.
>
> If a bear's sense of smell is 2 to 50 times better than a dog's? well, then I would guess that the opsacks aren't providing much more protection than a placebo. How well do rodents smell? dunno. Maybe opsacks protect against them.
>
> But lots of folks "believe" in things that have been disproven by experiment. Belief and hope are amazing human traits, and evidence often doesn't shake belief.
>
> That being said, I have never been bothered by bears while storing my food in a nylon stuff sack, but I don't pretend the stuff sack protects my food. I just seldom camp where habituated bears go looking for food, and when I do, my food is safely locked away inside a bear box.
>
> HYOH, YMMV
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