[pct-l] Op-Sack Study

[Jeffrey Olson]

My experience with op-sacks is they were pretty worthless.  I was as 
careful as I could be handling brand new ones and filling them with my 
extra food.  I put them in the trunk of my car and hiked for a week.  I 
came back and a mouse/mice had nibble into almost all my snacks. One for 
the mice.  I've also noted mice don't like to move from their known 
paths. I've camped and had them run across my face/body until i shifted 
my bag a couple feet...

Jeffrey Olson
Rapid City, SD

On 8/21/2013 11:38 AM, Dan Welch wrote:
> There is an interesting study on Backpacking Lite that tested Op-Sack bags
> against ordinary ziplocks.  They used K-9s trained to find illicit drugs and
> placed illicit drugs into these bags in lockers at a girls university for
> the dogs to locate.  Bottom line - the Op-sacks appeared to do no better
> than the ziplocks - 84 seconds vs 86 seconds to find the stash.
>
> They took great care to prevent contamination of the outside of the bags,
> using surgical gloves and multiple people to carefully load the bags.  This
> is certainly more care than the average backpacker would use.  To eliminate
> social cues, they made sure the K9 handlers did not know the location of the
> drugs.  It looked like a pretty good study overall...
>
> Anyway, if you have a BPL subscription you can judge for yourself - it
> requires a membership to read.  However, it appears investing in Op-Sacks vs
> using ziplocks for critter deterrence may not be justified...  The link is
> below.
>
> http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/odor_proof_bags_stu
> dy.html#.UhT1lMzD9jo
>
> Timberline
>