Re: Bear Food Ediquette While Camping Question CO

Bear canisters don't mask or lock in the smell of the food inside. The purpose of a bear canister is twofold. First, to protect your food from being eaten by a bear (and numerous other critters as previous posters have stated). Second, to hopefully condition the bears into believing they can't get food from human campsites because of their inability to open the canisters.

You can buy liners for a bear canister that are supposed to lock in the odor of your food so bears can't smell it. That helps with the first purpose of the bear canister. But the second purpose, the training of bears, requires that bears find the canisters and then learn that they can't get food from them. So technically, you would want to remove any odor sealing liner from the canister when you stash it at night.

I have great doubts about the validity of the second purpose of a bear canister. I think the wildlife managers are hoping the canisters will train a generation of bears and then subsequent bruins will not bother to attempt to get food from campsites. I just don't think that will work. I think the 3rd generation of bears will just start exploring campsites looking for food anyway. So bear canisters will only serve the function of protecting your food from being eaten by a bear, in which case using the odor sealing bags at night will help to keep the bear from finding it in the first place.