[pct-l]smelling bears

[jape at nethere.com (Eckert)]

I understand what you're saying, and I think the reasoning is sound. 
 But this suggests that backcountry bears are primarily smell driven, 
rather than visually driven.  If this were the case, then the stealth 
camper wouldn't be safe sleeping with food.  Using my mutt as an 
example, he can home in on a strip of bacon, which has been hidden 
behind the tire on the car, from across the yard with a tailing wind. 
 Goodness knows you won't find a disbeliever here, that thru's have a 
tendency to broadcast a scent.  They ought to be pulling in every bear 
in a 1/2 mile radius if scent were the key.

I don't have the answer, but the apparent inconsistancies are giving me 
something to mull around.  An additional observation; I was watching a 
hiking show on the Outdoor channel several years ago.  The trip was 
along an Alaskan river, on the sandy flats of the delta, close to the 
ocean.  A number of bears were in the area, and the intrepid guide took 
great care in making sure his presence was made known to the animals. 
 He was always looking for an escape route, and was more nervous when he 
couldn't see the bears, than when they were in sight.    Yet every 
night, when he set up his camp, he followed two rules.  He always cooked 
and washed up several hundred yards from his sleeping area, and he 
stored all his food and smellables in Hefty bag, placed inside another 
Hefty, and laid on the ground at a site distant from both the cook area 
and the sleeping area.  He claimed on camera to have never lost food to 
a bear.  Now if a dog can smell cocaine or heroin through double 
wrappings of saran wrap, packed in coffee, inside a trunk stored in a 
semi, I would think that a bear could catch the scent of beef jerky 
through a couple of Hefty bags.  

dude wrote:

>i think that the "visual confirmation" is only really used by 
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>habituated bears in areas where they come into contact with lots of 
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>humans.  I was told by a ranger in Yosemite that habituated bears had 
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>learned to recognize the shape of ice chests, packs, pic-nik baskets, 
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>etc. He said that once a bear is successful in finding a mother-load 
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>of food in a few coolers, they start to rely less and less on their 
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>smell. Pretty soon, the bears don't need to rely on their smell any 
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>more and they just start trolling cars in the parking lot looking for 
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>things in the shape of ice chests and packs.  The ranger told me that 
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>he had heard of several instances of bears breaking in to cars 
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>containing empty ice chests just to see what was inside them.
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>The only reason that they don't use their small as much in the NP's 
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>is because WE taught them that they didnt need to.  
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>dude
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>>Steve Courtway wrote:
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>>><snip> the women who run with the squirrels are 3, and I don't
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>>>think they want to enforce a code of silence when camping.
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>>>Again, bears can HEAR and SMELL further than they can SEE.
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>>><snip>
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>>we had a conversation at work today, revolving around this topic. 
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>>I have read that bears have much better sniffers than dogs, and
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>>dogs are famous for their ability to nose out narcotics and such,
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>>even when the odors are disguised by coffee, gasoline and all
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>>that.  This would suggest to me then, that every car in the
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>>Yosemite parking lot would be a candidate for destruction...in
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>>that every car is going to contain a substantial amount of
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>>residual food odor from the last fast food joint, the groceries
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>>that just traveled 400 miles in the trunk...
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>>But, only cars with visible enticements seem to be torn open.  In
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>>fact, visitors are repetitively told to hide, cover up, and remove
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>>everything from the car, in the way of candy wrappers, ice chests,
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>>and pick-a-nick baskets.  What appears to be a bear's need for
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>>visual support of an encouraging odor might might be a part of the
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>>explanation of why stealth camping has been so successful, so far.
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>> A stuff sack, full of stanky food, and a-danglin' from a tree
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>>branch provides both scent and sight signals to the bear, and the
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>>animal will work for hours to be able to make off with it.  But a
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>>stuffed sleeping bag, full of stanky hiker, on top of a food bag
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>>would not offer the visual clue to the bear that would support his
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>>olfactory suspicions.
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>>Of course, the first time a bi-polar bruin chose to chomp, and "to
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>>hell with visual confirmation", a whole new bear problem would
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>>emerge.
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>>my thoughts,
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>>Eckert
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