Here is a good example of how NOT TO hang a food pack. 
In the description below, the camper says that he normally stashed his food barell and was only using the rope to hang the current day's food - but when told of the approaching bears, he used the same rope to hang his barrel.

The rope must have been over some smaller branches or something, for the bear to be able to get that much slack into the system - also, running the rope above that rock, that was so convenient for the bear to use, to reach up and grab the rope was not a very good idea.  The only thing that really surprised me was that the bear had not yet learned to bite thru the rope - either that, or it was too tough to bite thru.  In any case, certainly not the perfect hanging technique.  Too bad for the "experiment", the bear wasn't able to get the barell to the ground so we could see if it was bearproof - looked to me like the bear couldn't get a grip on the barell the way it was hanging, and just got tired of standing up - likely headed down the lake to the next campsite looking for easier pickings.

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the vid you want is "Black Bear encounter on Knife Lake"

there is a link to this vid on CCR that included the following comments from the camper:


Andy and Marion,
A number of years ago I bought two of your 30L barrels for all of the canoe trips that I take into northern Minnesota, Canada and Alaska. They have worked wonderful over the years and I have never had any issues with animals until this year. We were in a campsite in the Boundary Waters Canoe area in northern Minnesota about dinnertime when a group of canoeists passed our site and told us that a sow and 3 cubs just left the next campsite over and were running along the shore straight towards our site. We were just about to eat so our barrel was sitting in camp. At lunch we had finished up the last of a small pack of food that we hung every night but we hadn't taken the foodpack rope down yet. So I thought a quick solution would be to hang the barrel (instead of take it back into the woods), get into the canoe and watch the bears pass on through our campsite. I have never hung a barrel but it seemed like the quickest solution. As you can see from the attached video the only thing that saved the remaining 5 days of our trip was the fact that we had our food in a barrel instead of a canvas pack. I posted this story to the internet and received many inquiries about the barrel so I included a pointer to your website in my responses. I think this video is a great testament to the advantage of barrels over canvas packs and if you would like to reference it to help market your product you have my full permission.

I'm a " hanger ", but you could see myself becoming a " stash-er" under the right circumstances
I have a question about the blue barrels?
I know their not really bear proof like the food vault types are. I also know you want to use a pin/clip to lock the steel rim ring securely in case a bear does find and investigate your stash.
My question concerns the bears ability to haul your barrel away from site, maybe somewhere you can follow and retrieve it.
I read that you shouldn't tie off your barrel, as that gives the bear the leverage to bite/maul it, much more than if it was rolling around. I get that.
I see the many of the blue barrels have two folding type handles on them. It seems to me that could be a weak link in the "system" that would allow a clever bear to be able to pin barrel down with his paw or carry it away very easily?
A little Googling and I found that Eureka makes some hi-vis orange barrels that have molded in handles that appear to remedy this problem IF it's even an issue
Anyone have similar concerns or heard about such occurrences?

Edited:


I worry about that traveling solo, so to ease my mind I came up with my own personal bear alarm. I keep it in my tent at night just in case I get a night visitor and the usual shouting doesn't scare them away?
It's a personal security alarm the size of a deck of cards. Runs on 9v battery. When the cord/pin is pulled it sets off a high decibel alarm similar to a home fire alarm.
On portages, I tie the cord off to tree/branch and the alarm stays in zipped side pocket of food pack. Bear grabs/disturbs pack, alarm goes off.
I can't imagine a bear or any wild critter being able to take that sound? Of course if it were a smart OLD bear, they might be deaf

I hear what you say about the molded handles. Maybe the difference wouldn't be enough.

I'm lazy, now a stasher for 5 yrs.  S'pose when I have a bear, I'll be a hanger again

Magicpaddler, I like your idea of putting a rock in the bag. Will have to try that next year. 
This year I made a crude slingshot and it didn't work well-either- too much or too little so I went back to tying string around a rock and throwing it. ( and of course the string comes off at least once) .
In 2010 I went to Sawbill where I noticed the food pack up in the tree in front of Sawbill Outfitters hung using a pulley.  We tried that and it worked really well.  This year we rigged a 2 pulley system with one over the branch and the other at the food pack and it pulled up like it weighed 10 pounds.  That's my system from now on.  As I am only base camping now we only have to rig up once a trip.