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Ursacks are idiotic

All you need to know about Ursack as a company is that they actually sued the National Parks Service to get their product approved and lost because of the following reasons, which a judge upheld based on submitted evidence (which anyone can easily search for and confirm on the Internet):

• Ursacks were easily punctured by bear bites allowing bear saliva contamination.
• Ursacks have a rope allowing bear to carry it away.
• Ursacks tied to trees encouraged bears to destroy the tree.
• Ursacks with metal liners where destroyed leaving metal shards in the food.
• Smashed food and gear (cookware) in Ursack made it unusable.

Keep in mind that none of these things happen when you use an approved bear canister instead. You just stash the canister and if and when a bear finds it there is no way it can carry it away so it just leaves after trying to open it. An Ursack encourages a bear to hang around since it can puncture the container, smell the food punctured, and keep on ripping at it to get just enough to make it think it might have a chance eventually to get it all. All you have to do is watch a bear trying to open a canister vs an Ursack to see why these are obviously so inferior they aren’t even worth the trouble and cost.

This leaves three options:

• Carry a heavy but effective bear canister and use it
• Only stop at places where smellies can be secured (and learn to hang them)
• Don’t bikepack in bear and/or rodent country

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