DentonDoc wrote on Feb 18^th, 2010 at 4:45am:

Puckster wrote on Feb 18th, 2010 at 2:49am:  Most recently, this year I'll be packing a hard rubber ball, with a hole drilled through the middle and parachute cord tied to it, to help hang bear rope.  prouboy Make it a hollow core ball (like a tennis ball) and cut a slit on the other side.  Then after you've used it to toss your bear rope, you can squeeze the ball to open the slit and put it on top of a ridge pole to keep from poking a hole in your tarp. dd

I like DD's idea. I've tried many different ways to sling the line, but the way he mentions seems in my home trials to work well.
The slit for ridge pole is ingenious, but I found another use for it.
If you need a little extra heft, you can put a suitable size rock or handful of sand in hollow ball.

prouboy,
I believe Mad-Mat had a good thought regarding your throw rope ;)
I know I changed my set-up after reading about it. You mentioned parachute cord. If its military spec, your looking at about 600 lb breaking strength. Sooner or later, your ball/bag is going to wrap itself around a branch/limb, that you can' t pull loose from. You won't be able to break para-cord, so you'll have to cut it, and hope the ball/sack falls free :-[
 The solution is to use a lighter weight/shorter, piece of throw rope on ball/sack, sort of like a leader, maybe 40-50 lb breaking strength?  Strong enough to pull you primary rope thru, but if it hangs up, you should be able to break it off.
Still might lose ball/sack but at least you won't leave a long unsightly piece of synthetic rope flapping in the breeze for many seasons to come ;)