Bear, and Other Animals vs. the Ursack

hi I'm Kevin welcome to my channel today we're going to test the earth sack bear resistant bag against bears and a few other animals so this is an earth sack that's the brand name it's a Kevlar bag made to keep your food in when you're camping in the backcountry it's made of Kevlar so it's resistant to bears biting and scratching through this and the idea is that it protects your food from being taken from a bear I've got a couple of the older white ones they now sell them in black a nurse that can be really good because sometimes it's hard to find that perfect tree to hang your food in to keep it away from a bear sometimes you might be camping in a place where there are no trees and actually hanging a bear bag it can be challenging for a lot of people even if you do find the right spot so the idea with this is you just tie it to a tree away from your camp and a bear won't be able to get at your food this is also a really good option for backpackers because the bag itself is much lighter than other bear canister options but a nurse sack isn't perfect unlike a canister a bear can still crush your food and it might be able to bite through the bag and puncture something inside so the goal of protecting food in the backcountry isn't really to keep your food from being stolen on you it's to protect the bear from accessing your food and giving that bear reward and making it become habituated so one criticism of the earth sack is that a bear could bite through this puncture a container inside perhaps full of liquids and the bear would still get a reward from that experience so since I live in bear country I thought I would test out my air sac on actual bears now before we start I want to make it clear that I'm doing this on my own property far from my home and other homes and I live in a rural area and we're quite far away from campgrounds or other recreation areas so anything I'm doing to the bears isn't going to affect someone else so the setup for this is really really simple all I'm gonna do is hang my bear bag in the backcountry but before I do I'm gonna put a couple of open containers of sardines inside I'll tie this tightly to a tree and I'll set up some trail cameras and those sardines should attract a bear so when I set this up I was really targeting a bear but I was surprised to actually attract a whole variety of other animals so we're gonna see the earth sack tested not just against a bear but a whole spectrum of animals and we're gonna start with the easiest and work our way to the hardest of course just after setting this up it had to snow so that deer walked past the earth sack as if it didn't even care let's try another animal all right that coyote looked a little more interested in the earth sack but in the end it didn't care either so let's try and up the game with an animal that wants to get into this bag all right finally an animal that wants to get inside the bag that raccoon worked at it for a little while but I was really surprised that it gave up only after a couple of minutes given the reward that's inside that bag I thought it would have worked a little bit harder but I guess times aren't very tough in the forest and it can find a meal elsewhere that was a lynx and I did not expect to capture a lynx on camera at all so I feel pretty lucky that we did the Lynx was clearly interested in the sardines but just like the raccoon at gaze off after a short while so that was an American Martin more commonly known as a pine marten that animal was certainly interested in getting at the fish inside the bag it came back time and time again I just showed you a little clip but that animal came back all through the night at different times trying to get into the bag biting at the bag it has little needle-like teeth and it punctured the bag in numerous places I thought it was really interesting to see how aggressive that Martin really was [Music] [Music] [Music] so finally what you've been waiting for an actual bear and this bear challenged the earth sack pretty good wasn't the biggest bear in the world but it bit and chewed and clawed at that bag and couldn't get through although it did leave some pretty hefty teeth marks in the bag a couple times I could hear it crushing the sardine cans with its teeth in the end that bear was happy just rub in that fish oil all over its head just like a dog might with something stinky and you know after three or four minutes that bear moved on as well so in summary I would say that the earth sack is bear resistant it's not bear proof it's definitely bear resistant as advertised it's called a bear resistant bag for a reason bears will have a tough time getting the food inside the bag and the bag is likely going to keep them from stealing it however they can bite right through this and if you've got a container with some oil or something inside they're going to get a bit of a reward so I still like the earth sack I think it has its place in my opinion it's still useful in environments in bear country that are less travelled by humans and perhaps a little bit more remote where you don't have that history of negative bear encounters I've had an earth sack for many years and I've never had a problem of course I've never put fresh sardines in my earth sack that will definitely really motivate bears keeping dry food keeping it well sealed as part of the equation but Bears do have a tremendous sense of smell and if there's a problem bear around it will find your food bag so I think an earth sack is best used as kind of an extra precaution in bear country where you might have a difficult time hanging your food in a tree and where you don't have a history of negative bear encounters that's the video guys thanks for watching I hope you got something out of this if you did please hit like share and subscribe and certainly leave a comment below that really helps promote the video as always have a great day and I'll see you in the next one [Music]

Channel: Kevin Outdoors

Views: 91,178

Keywords: kevin outdoors, bears, bear, bear safety, ursack, bear bag, bear hang, gear review, canoeing, canoe, hiking, backpacking, camping, wild animals, boreal forest, boreal, backpacking gear, camping gear, ursack allmitey, ultralight backpacking, backpacking gear review, camping gear you must own, camping gear review, ursack allmitey review, bear bag vs canister, ursack bear bag review, food storage ideas

Id: U-H77zu8sRo

Length: 12min 17sec (737 seconds)

Published: Wed May 27 2020