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The Floating Method for Protecting Food from Bears (???)

Glenn MacGrady

Glenn MacGrady

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"Canoeists love to debate camping techniques. Single blade or double. Stuffing your tent or rolling it. Ground cloth inside or outside. One of the longest-running, raging disputes among wilderness paddlers is how to properly store your food to keep it away from bears."

" . . . let me tell you about the bear canoe method. . . . Also called the floating technique, this alternative has been used by many youth camps I worked at throughout the years. The system is simple, though not idiotproof."

paddlingmag.com

The Bear Canoe: Debunking The Second Worst Way To Store Your Food Overnight

Also called the floating technique, this backcountry food storage method is simple in theory but not idiot-proof, warns Kevin Callan.
paddlingmag.com paddlingmag.com
 
I have had my BSA guide students and scouts ask this very question, possibly alternatively using watertight floating bags. I call attention to a famous swimming bear on Lows Lake in the Adirondacks, affectionately known as "yellow-yellow" from her DEC attached ear tags. For several seasons, Y-Y was known to enter the lake not far from the resident BSA camp, and swim a half mile between several nicely spaced islands and the mainland, all loaded with often occupied campsites for her nightly raid of unprotected food. I have no doubt that YY could easily detect anything that had an odor inside a canoe as she swam by and could easily capsize the canoe for her prize. Unfortunately, After a few years, during the legal fall hunting season. YY met her untimely fate.
 
O boy.....I'm not sure if Kevin Callan is warning against this practice or endorsing it, but it is probably one of the worst things anyone could do. He specifically references large groups....black bears seldom bother with large groups, unless its in a park where they are very used to people. In the bush, they will generally leave large groups alone. We always piled all of our food barrels (between 7 and 10 full size barrels) a distance away from the main tent sites, they were never molested in the 30 years I was involved with group trips.

Anyway, hang or don't hang, whatever, but don't throw it in a floating canoe, that's silliness waiting to turn into a disaster.
 
memaquay said:
I'm not sure if Kevin Callan is warning against this practice or endorsing it
Click to expand...

He's debunking the method and calls it "the second worst way to store your food overnight." He doesn't name the "first worst" although there may or may not be a slight suggestion that it's hanging. Don't know; one would have to research Callan's writings on the subject.

I have long thought of odor proofing and bear protecting food by sinking it underwater in a waterproof container off shore attached to a heavy weight or anchor. The sunken treasure could be retrieved either by a rope attached to the shore or, if you are even afraid of bears pulling on such a rope, by wading or paddling out to the underwater, anchored container.

​

 
I would not leave my canoe out in a lake overnight, but I wondered about stashing my food in a bear vault, putting the vault in a sealed drysack and floating it well offshore with an anchor to hold it in place.

But it would make the trip to get a late night munchie a "bear"!
 
I remember a long ago trip on Forked Lake where we ran into folks who stored their food overnight in their canoe. They woke up to a mighty splash and found their food bag swimming off with a bear while their canoe was flipped over in the lake. Not my idea of a good time, that's for sure.

That's all for now. Take care and until next time...be well.

snapper
 
In the West, river trips in forests are usually higher up in the watersheds and have some fast water. A lot of those I have done in rafts. Using a frame it is possible to sling a large cooler in one. The coolers tend to be large and heavy and I never liked moving them. They are generally in the aft end of the boat with the bow near shore. Same with drift boats. Our rafts trips include a group and some dogs. I have never had a cooler bothered by a bear in a boat. A few times, we have had some food storage on the ground, with some pots and pans on top of the packs. Any bears that show up get run out of camp by our dog pack.

During backpack trips I always hang my food from a tree limb far off the ground.
 
Woodpuppy said:
Giving the man the benefit of the doubt, the #1 worst way to store food would be in your tent.
Click to expand...

That would make sense and is likely what Callan meant, rhetorically. I was thinking too logically and didn't even think of in your tent as a bear protection technique.
 
Woodpuppy said:
Giving the man the benefit of the doubt, the #1 worst way to store food would be in your tent.
Click to expand...

That's where I kept my food and I felt it was the best option.

At the time I was tripping with a dog that hated bears. My rationale was that she would smell/hear the bear before it got to the tent and that the two of us would have no problem scaring it away if needed.

Stashing away from camp I worried we'd wake up to find the food molested or gone.

We were also tripping in remote areas with bears that weren't likely to be conditioned to campers.

Alan
 
alsg said:
If you are hauling a cooler, that's fine. A lot of trips, especially solo trips, or those with substantial portages, aren't really suitable for bringing a cooler.
Click to expand...
Agree. Never in BWCAW or Quetico. I would consider in some Adirondack routes.
 
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