Super Good Camping Podcast
Hi there! We are a blended family of four who are passionate about camping, nature, the great outdoors, physical activity, health, & being all-around good Canadians! We would love to inspire others to get outside & explore all that our beautiful country has to offer. Camping fosters an appreciation of nature, physical fitness, & emotional well-being. Despite being high-tech kids, our kids love camping! We asked them to help inspire your kids. Their creations are in our Kids section. For the adults, we would love to share our enthusiasm for camping, review some of our favourite camping gear, share recipes & menus, tips & how-to's, & anything else you may want to know about camping. Got a question about camping? Email us so we can help you & anyone else who may be wondering the same thing. We are real people, with a brutally honest bent. We don't get paid by anyone to provide a review of their product. We'll be totally frank about what we like or don't like.
Super Good Camping Podcast
Protecting Bears Through Better Food Storage in the Backcountry
The line between thriving wilderness and dangerous bear encounters often comes down to one simple thing: how we store our food in the backcountry. Grant Breidenbach from Bear Vault joins us to reveal fascinating insights about bear behavior and the science behind effective food protection strategies.
Bears possess what scientists call "spatio-temporal memory" – they remember both where and when they found food sources. This remarkable adaptation serves them perfectly in natural settings but creates serious problems when they discover human food. With noses containing four times the scent receptors of a bloodhound and surprising intelligence, bears quickly learn that our calorie-dense snacks offer more reward for less effort than foraging naturally. As Grant explains, "Human food, not even once" should be our mantra when it comes to bears.
We explore how traditional food-hanging methods have become increasingly ineffective as bears learn to defeat them – chewing through ropes, breaking branches, or even shimmying across lines to access suspended food bags. The Bear Vault's ingenious design, with its slippery sides and carefully engineered dimensions, creates a physical barrier bears simply cannot defeat. After trying and receiving no food reward, bears quickly return to their natural diet.
Most powerfully, Grant shifts our perspective from self-protection to ecosystem preservation: "There's no such thing as a problem bear – there are problem people." When we fail to properly store food, we set bears up for dangerous behavior that often leads to their euthanization. One Colorado case study showed a 98% reduction in human-bear conflicts within five years after implementing canister requirements and education.
Whether you're planning your first wilderness adventure or are a seasoned backcountry traveler, this conversation will transform how you think about food storage and bear protection. Join us in understanding that when we enter the wilderness, we're guests in the bear's home – and protecting them is our responsibility.
Subscribe now for more insightful conversations about adventure, conservation, and responsible outdoor recreation!
www.bearvault.com
https://www.facebook.com/bearvaultcanisters
https://www.instagram.com/bearvault/
CONNECT WITH US AT SUPER GOOD CAMPING:
Support the podcast & buy super cool SWAG: https://store.skgroupinc.com/super_good_camping/shop/home
EMAIL: hi@supergoodcamping.com
WEBSITE: www.supergoodcamping.com
YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqFDJbFJyJ5Y-NHhFseENsQ
INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/super_good_camping/
TWITTER: https://twitter.com/SuperGoodCampin
FACEBOOK GROUP: https://www.facebook.com/groups/SuperGoodCamping/
TIKTOK: https://www.tiktok.com/@supergoodcamping
Hello and good day. Welcome to the Super Good Camping podcast. My name is Pamela.
Speaker 2:I'm Tim.
Speaker 1:And we are from supergoodcampingcom. We're here because we're on a mission to inspire other people to get outside and enjoy camping adventures such as we have as a family. Today's guest is the marketing manager for a very cool product. We had the pleasure of meeting him at the Toronto Outdoor Adventure Show and seeing one of his canisters. That got a bit of a real life test out in the field. Please welcome Grant Breidenbach.
Speaker 3:Hey, welcome. Thank you so much for having me on the show. It's really awesome to get to chat with you guys this afternoon.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was nice to talk to you for a second time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I hope you had a great week. It's been a little pause in between the time we met and the time we're doing the podcast because somebody was doing a honeymoon.
Speaker 3:So I hope that was incredible. Yes, oh, it was. It was a really, really great time. And has any of that snow melted up in Toronto? Last time I was up there, it was buried up to the neck.
Speaker 2:It seemed like this was a. This was a snowy season for us this year. The last two previous to that were nothing. I don't even know if I broke out the snowblower on one of the years at all. Yet we're all good. They're just starting to do. I think recently, you know, maybe, maybe the last couple of weeks. Uh, they've started to do ice outs up farther north was um algonquin and stuff.
Speaker 3:Okay, won't be long until the canoes are on the lake.
Speaker 2:That's awesome canoes are on the lake already. Okay. They awesome Canoes are on the lake already, okay.
Speaker 3:They don't wait.
Speaker 2:All right, that's fantastic, our paddling season is too short for most of the hardcore ones, so they're out there as soon as they can break through. That makes sense.
Speaker 3:And you've got a limited amount of time before the mosquitoes really hatch too, and you've got to kind of exploit that.
Speaker 2:If we're lucky, we get a couple of weeks. Yeah, and black flies and all the good fun things, yeah, things that I don't enjoy. Well, and for me it's not a big issue, I don't get bit that much.
Speaker 1:Pamela, on the other hand, is an absolute magnet for them that and I get an allergic reaction to the bites. So I get these big red itchy welts that drive me crazy.
Speaker 2:And then she's not very fun to camp with. Totally fair, Give us a bit of an origin story for for bear vaults.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So bear vault came out of the Sierra range down in in California and really it goes back even a little bit before bear vault, into the 80s and 90s and out in the backcountry. There you've got black bears and they were running into a ton of trouble with bears getting into backpackers' foods. And the bears were getting more aggressive. They were just totally losing their fear towards humans. They just weren't acting like bears anymore. And you know, the unfortunate thing is that meant that a lot of bears were also having to be euthanized.
Speaker 3:And you know, we all know that bears are such a critical part of their ecosystem. And you know, somebody was like we've got to do something. You know, like food over the tree is just not working. These bears have long figured that out, dragging it out of the tree. You know, chowing down on these calories. We figured that out dragging it out of the tree, you know, chowing down on these calories. We need some way to to properly store food. And so, um, basically somebody came along and the first bear canister was this thick black ABS plastic. Um and uh it. You know it was kind of rough but it got the job done and you know the bears would check it out, roll it around and it worked really quickly.
Speaker 3:Suddenly, the bears weren't accessing human food and the bears were quickly saying, you know, actually, those berries that are eating, or you know whatever that natural food source in the season was, the bears were going back to that food source and the ecosystem was healing as a result.
Speaker 3:And then so in the early 2000s, the folks that started Bear Vault came along and said you know, we love the concept, you know it's doing a really good job protecting the bears.
Speaker 3:But this original bear canister is not very user friendly, like it's very effective for the bears but it's a pain to use for somebody and it's also a pain to haul it around. You can't fit very much food in it. And so Bare Vault came along and said what if we made the sides clear so that you could see your food inside? It made the opening wide so that you could actually get your hand in there to find your Snickers bar, and made the lock so that you didn't need a tool to open it so you could just open it with your hands. So really, you know, building off of the idea of those previous canisters, but then Bare Vault, you know, really is the biggest provider of bare resistant food containers on the market and we get the chance to, you know, work with people all over to, you know, provide canisters and we've been able to see not just in the Sierra but in other places. When canisters start using, the ecosystem starts to heal and the bears become healthy and we've been able to see that in so many places.
Speaker 1:And it's just the coolest, coolest thing, and so it's helping the bears because it's what they're getting. Snickers bars is not good for bears. It's good for us, not good for us either. But also, because they're getting Snickers bars is not good for bears, good for us, not good for us either. But also because they're becoming habituated into like there's human food and I don't need to eat.
Speaker 3:Exactly so. Bears, you know, bears is kind of this unnecessarily fancy word called spatio-temporal memory and all it really means is that bears think both in terms of space and time. So that's where they found food and when they found food, and that's, you know, how they evolved and that normally works really well for them, right? You know, I found huckleberries on a particular hillside in a particular time of year and they go back to that place again and again and they teach their young to go back there as well. Right, and that works really well for them. That's how they are able to get the calories they need to hibernate all winter and, you know, do everything that a happy, healthy bear does.
Speaker 3:But unfortunately, you know, our human food is really the biggest trap for a bear. You think about the calories. We've been talking about Snickers bars, or you know dehydrated food. You know are ultra processed, refined or even just all in the same place. Our human food is super calorically dense and you know the time it takes a bear to eat a Snickers bar versus, you know, a patch of berries, or digging up grubs, or you know tearing apart a log to find fungus inside or you know whatever that food source for the season is it's way easier for the bears to access our human food.
Speaker 3:And so once a bear starts getting in trouble, and so often we're like, oh, it's a problem bear, that bear's in trouble. But really there's no such thing as a problem bear. There's problem, people, that we've set the bears up for failure. You know, they're just. They're just doing what they've naturally evolved to do, and and doing it really well, you know, with their incredible noses, eyes, ears, and so when we go into the bear's home, you know whether that's paddling or whether that is backpacking or whatever our wilderness activity is. You know it's it's. You know, at Bear Vault. We see it as that. We're in the bear's home, you know, and and it's our responsibility to be a good steward of of that bear's home.
Speaker 2:That's excellent, I think. I think a lot of previous discussion about food in the back country has been about keeping your food as opposed to not giving it to bears. Exactly, you know what I'm saying? It's a two. It's two different philosophies in the grand scheme of things.
Speaker 3:And I think you can have both. You know and and you know there's some people that they you know I think there's there's three reasons. People get a canister. You know they're they're backpacking somewhere. That you know, especially down in the States, that there's a legal requirement and that you know the park service has, has basically made the choice for you and said, hey, you're going to carry this and you're going to protect the bears. Or, like you mentioned, somebody is doing it because they want that security, they want trip insurance, they don't want to go hungry without their morning coffee, or they're doing it because they truly care about the bears. And the nice thing is that it does it all. Regardless of what your reason is, you get all of those benefits and you don't have to pick and choose.
Speaker 2:Interesting. I didn't realize that. I know that they're speaking for here in Ontario, I want to say for Canada, but I'm not a hundred percent sure. I know there's requirements in specific areas, and I actually think boundary waters, which is close to us. But on right, um, you have to hang. That's, that's their, they don't they, they don't mandate that you have to have it in a, in a vessel of any type or anything like that, but you have to hang.
Speaker 3:so so, yeah, so the boundary waters, canoe area they were. We've been really excited about what, what they've been doing down there, because for years, you know, they've basically just said it's a free-for-all. You can use your food as a pillow if you want to, or you know, whatever you want. And it's not a great idea.
Speaker 3:And you know so much. You know food conditioning habituation and you know, and in places that can be, you know cultural and how that works and has evolved. But they've with time seen that oh, that doesn't work that well. And suddenly these bears are getting really unhealthy. People are having, you know, bears that have lost all their fear of humans. You know, come through these paddling campsites in the middle of nowhere and you know, and suddenly they need to do something differently.
Speaker 3:So they've implemented what the Forest Service in the States calls a food storage order and they can take different shapes and sizes.
Speaker 3:They're written a little bit differently from forest to forest or in the national parks.
Speaker 3:This one specifically says that anytime food is unattended which also includes if you're doing a double carry on a portage anytime that food's unattended it needs to be hung very well in a tree or in an IGBC certified bear canister.
Speaker 3:And that IGBC certification we can talk a little bit more about that, but basically it's this interagency group of different biologists and managing agencies in the states that basically throw a bear canister in with these professional grizzly bears for about an hour and they try to tear it apart and if they can't get in, they say all right, your product's good to go. We give you the seal of approval, so in the boundary waters you can either do a proper hang or use one of these IGPC approved containers. But really we're seeing that most people are choosing the IGPC containers because if they're double carrying they're not going to bother to string everything up in a tree while they're taking their canoe and leaving their food, or vice versa, unless they can leave a kid to hang out with the food or whatnot, To find out the bear that's coming to get the food, exactly, yeah, leave, leave the kid to fend off the bear Right.
Speaker 3:And then the other thing too. You know a lot of those trees, even the boundary waters, and you know as, as you work your your way North, especially into Ontario, the trees get smaller and smaller. You know, and you know in some places maybe if you took all the time in the world to get it right and break out the pulleys, you could get something that's you know textbook. But you know so many places with you know coniferous trees, it's just not really feasible to get a quote unquote textbook hang.
Speaker 3:Or you know, there's like the branch that's great. And then you know, after a few years of everyone camping there, you know those tree branches basically get sawed off by all the ropes going over it, and so we're seeing a lot of people adopting the canisters in the boundary waters and we're really excited about it and hope to see the human-bear conflict decrease over the next few years as a result.
Speaker 2:That's excellent and I'm glad that the agencies are working with whatever like folks like yourself that can provide different solutions. I know that part of a conversation with Cliff Jacobson. He was very unhappy that they were mandating hanging, he's like no, that's the stupidest thing in the world.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's definitely. You know. I think it can be generational. You know, and even even when places have say permitted uh, permitted hanging for the longest time, and they say you know what they're? The bears are pulling down these hangs, you have to use a canister, you know, there definitely are people that say oh, you know, I've been doing it this way for 40 years, why would I do it any different? But I think what people need to recognize is it's not the same bears that were there 40 years ago. You know there's been more people accessing these backcountry locations, there's been more food exposure for the bears and they're more food conditioned than they were 40 years ago. And you know what what may have worked, you know. At that point, you know our, our tools and techniques need to change.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, in science, science learns and evolves. I mean that's just that's the nature of it. So, so yay that that. You know I I've been hanging them for forever. I'm I'm also lazy, I'm not. I'm not adverse to not having to hang it Totally, not use it as a pillow, but not have it.
Speaker 3:There's options, right so.
Speaker 1:Grant, tell us about how exactly they can't get this open. What keeps them from getting it open?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's really cool. So basically it is sized specifically around a bear's jaw and while it's this really tough, thick, rugged plastic it's, it's really. You know, if a bear could get his jaw around it it would. It would crush right through it.
Speaker 3:But the beauty is a jaw a bear can't get his jaw around it. It's. It's built with these slippery sides and these rounded corners so the bear just can't get a grip. It just slips right off. And so the bear will come up to it, check it out, have a little soccer match with it, bat it back and forth. It maybe moves around a few square meters, but as long as you don't have it next to a ravine or a rushing rapid, it's not going to really go anywhere. And the bear basically realizes really quickly that it's not getting any food reward from the canister. It just can't get a grip, it's slipping off. It's using its precious calories and energy trying to tear it open. And when that doesn't work, the bear really quickly says, hmm, those berries up on the hillside weren't so bad After all. I think I'm going to go mess with those instead of trying to tear open this canister and expend all of my precious energy.
Speaker 2:So clear and unbreakable. I'm assuming some kind of polycarbonate.
Speaker 3:Exactly, yep, that's exactly what it's made out of. It's a specialty blend, but you can think of it similar to the stuff out of bulletproof glass. Exactly, yep, that's, that's exactly what it's what it's made out of. It's a it's a specialty blend, but, you know, you can think of it similar to like the stuff out of out of bulletproof glass.
Speaker 2:Exactly, yep, yep, cool, and by specialty blend do we have? Does it? Does it contribute to bigger weight, less?
Speaker 3:weight Of course you know we all wish it weighed. Nothing you know, but. But you know you could make something that is indestructible and weighs, you know, a gazillion pounds. And we've, we've, worked really hard over the years to like, find that careful balance of strong enough to you know, even, even you know big grizzly bears in in the West that you know love to do like a pumping motion on it, but also younger, juvenile black bears out east that have really sharp teeth and can gnaw almost like a rodent and have these just razor sharp teeth.
Speaker 2:And so we've worked really hard to find the intersection of exactly how tough to make it but also as light as possible so that you're not cursing it while hauling it across the portage or down the trail well, I know that the the the one that we saw when at the show with you was surprised me when I picked it up at how light it was, because I expected it to be much heavier than it than it is.
Speaker 3:It also surprised me that the gouge is in it, and yeah how did he not break into it like oh, it's amazing yeah, yeah, if, if you go to our website, we have some really fun footage where you can see bears chewing on it and you can really see how they approach it and different bears try different tactics and techniques, you know, and they're just, you know, they're naturally curious animals.
Speaker 3:So, like grizzly bears, you know, they're a little bit more kind of brute force. They'll walk right up to it, give it a little sniff and then, you know, just immediately kind of basically doing like CPR on it. You know you can almost imagine like staying alive by the Bee Gees, you know, playing like ah, ah, ah, you know. And then meanwhile the black bears, they're like a little more thoughtful. They'll walk up to it kind of gingerly, touch it, roll around, they'll almost tap on it and like listen to it, and then they'll, they'll kind of mouth it and they'll try to find just what they think might be the softest, weakest part. Um, often that's why you'll see them focus on the lid or around the locking mechanism and try. They're not gonna get in, but they, they try their best there and they're very strategic and it's just amazing to watch them think through it and how they approach it until they inevitably give up.
Speaker 2:We like the inevitability. Yes, I'm still in a bit of a mindset of I'm four days in and if they take it, I don't have enough food to get out.
Speaker 3:Exactly, yeah, and that's really the big advantage of a canister over like a soft-sided bag, because there are some like IGBC approved soft-sided bags out there. But the big downside there is that you know your food turns into a pulp, you know, inside the bag, and like the sunscreen is mixed into the oatmeal and the oatmeal is mixed into the camping fuel and you know it's completely inedible. Where, with the bear vault, um, after you know, after you, you know, get it back from the bear, you might have to wipe off some, some saliva. Or we've even seen bears that when they're they're done and tired, they drop a big pile of scat on it because they're just so, so frustrated, hired they drop a big pile of scat on it because they're just so, so frustrated.
Speaker 3:Exactly. But you know, once you get that cleaned off, you know your food's, your food's good to go and your morning coffee will be waiting for you.
Speaker 2:As soon as you started to say that that's what I pictured, I thought no, he can't be going there?
Speaker 2:Oh he is. Yeah, exactly, that's awesome. So just thinking about sizes you're talking about like an opening that's big enough to get your mid in there and pull stuff back out. Do they come in different volume sizes? I would take a small one if I was doing a three-day weekend, as opposed to I don't know. Take a bigger one two and a half three gallons probably, if I was doing a three day weekend, as opposed to, I don't know. Take a. Take a bigger one, two and a half three gallons probably, if I was doing a seven or eight day Exactly.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so we have four sizes. Um, we call it like the sprint, jaunt, track and journey. Um, you know, and it's, it's one of those things where your mileage may vary, especially like among the paddling community. You know, like, generally, like it's pretty well said that paddlers like to eat. Well, you know, in the back country, and so you know, we like to say the smallest one is one to two nights, the next one's three to four, five to six and seven up. You know, we've had folks come up and say, you know, oh my gosh, here's your biggest canister. I could barely get, you know, a night or two of food in there. I, you know, I eat like a King. Um, and other people you know come up to the exact same canister and say, oh my gosh, you know, I freeze, dry everything and pack it down super small and I, you know, I don't eat that much and I can get two weeks in that. So it, it's very much one of those your mileage may vary. Um, you know, type situations.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, well, I mean, I could see that. Uh, typically for for us, we take, you know, maybe the first day and a half or two days of fresh food, so that takes up a ton more space. Oh, absolutely yeah. And then the remainder is dehydrated, so so maybe I'm, maybe I'm a bucket and a half kind of a.
Speaker 3:we'll have to see. Yeah, the fresh is great, though, you know, especially when it's not blazing summer and it, you know, lasts just a little bit longer. It it's really. It's worth it to have have those good foods.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Steaks on the, on the, on the grill, or you know, real eggs in the morning and real bacon in the morning. Yeah, that, that works for me for sure. Uh, how do you? How do you pack them like? Do you do it? Because when we do, what are they? Poly polyurethane barrels? The blue barrels?
Speaker 2:yeah well, ours is red, but yes, okay um, they, they all come with big, big harnesses and stuff. Because you're carrying a ton of stuff in. We tend to do one yep of doing like, if you're talking about one person, you know, say, say seven-ish, whatever, seven-ish days, that hits me if, if you're, if, so you're, if you're tandem, you've got two of those right, whereas we tend to work with one barrel. For how many ever people are going and you just do smaller barrels and stuff.
Speaker 3:So there are a lot of different strategies. Um, and I think you know people, people need to kind of figure out what works best for for them, you know. So when we talk about backpacking, aside from paddling, you know we're telling people pack it inside your backpack. Um, you know, you think your food's heavy. Your food's the heaviest thing, you know, for people who are backpacking they don't have, you know, for people who are backpacking they don't have, you know, a big kevlar canoe or an aluminum canoe, you know your food's going to be the heaviest item that you have and so that once you want to put that relatively low and close to your back, so ideally you're going to put the canister in and turn it sideways in in the pack. Um, when it comes to paddling, you know folks aren't necessarily carrying a? Um, you know a backpacking backpack. Some people, you know, use those to carry items. But you know you might have different portage packs or, like you said, you know, canoe barrels with harnesses.
Speaker 3:So we've seen a lot of different styles and approaches, all of which have their merits. I've seen, I think a lot of us have heard of Camper Christina. She has this little day pack. I think she even calls it her bear vault purse and she basically just tucks that canister and it's pretty much the only thing in that little day pack and while she has her canoe on her shoulders and she's double carrying, that little backpack with just the canister goes along with her while she takes the canoe.
Speaker 3:We've seen a few companies that actually make specific portage packs that are exactly sized to fit the BV500, our largest BV500 Journey canister. That can work really well. They also can sit within those blue barrels. You can put a canister right within the blue barrel. Or, last but not least, they fit great anywhere within a larger portage pack. But generally speaking, because it's slippery and hard to get a grip on for the bear, it can be a little slippery and hard for us to get a grip on too. So it's best to pack it in in another backpack.
Speaker 3:Just the important tip is that you know, say you're double carrying and you bring, you know, the canister to to the other spot where you're going to put your canoe in, and you set it down um, take the can out of the pack. We've heard so many stories of people that set their backpacks down with all the food inside and then the backpack gets a drug off to who knows where, and there goes not just your food, but also, you know, your tent, you know your fire equipment, like everything you need to, you know, survive and thrive in the back country by. So so you know, taking, taking that canister out is a really good rule of thumb. Brilliant, yeah, hadn't hadn't thought taking that canister out is a really good rule of thumb, brilliant.
Speaker 2:Yeah, hadn't thought about that. That would suck, because backpacks aren't cheap. Yeah, your barrel's gone, or your canister's gone. Your food's gone, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So. But despite the toughness of the bear vault they can still smell through that, that they can get a scent of the food.
Speaker 3:Exactly. Yeah, bear's noses are absolutely incredible. So my favorite way to visualize it is if we were to take the surface area inside of one of our noses and you were to, like, basically lay it out flat. The surface area inside our nose is about the size of a postage stamp. If you took a bloodhound dog you know, known for incredible scent of smell, tracking all these things and took all of its scent receptors and laid it out flat, you'd have about a sheet of printer paper. Now if you took a black bear, you think about that big, long nose that's actually hollow inside, with all these internal chambers called turbinates, and if you laid it out flat, how, how much would you guys think? How, how, how big do you think it would be? Four by eight sheet of plywood, okay, four by eight sheet of plywood. What do you think, pamela?
Speaker 3:yeah, no, I'm gonna go around there yeah, yeah, that's good, it's a little small. It'd be about four sheets of printer paper, so about four, four times the bloodhound dogs and substantially more than our little postage stamp. Um, I think that just kind of helps visualize how incredible their noses are. So, with that in mind, we don't even try to make it scent proof and, and you know, there's products out there that are advertised, as you know, scent-proof liner, scent-proof this, that, and they don't really work. I mean, they can substantially reduce the scent transmission, you know. But even you know the residue on your hands. You know if you eat, you know food, you know you have granola and then you touch that bear canister, guess what? There's food residue on there. So it's more about you know outsmarting the bear's ability to get in rather than you know outwitting their ability of of smell.
Speaker 3:I think a lot of another common misconception people think is they're like okay, we know bears have really good noses, but they must be blind, bears must not have good eyesight, and so we'll see people where they're like oh yeah, it's really sealed, or it's in one of those freeze-dried food packages, and well, there's no way the bear's going to smell that. So I'm just going to set it out and the bear's not going to see it. Guess what? The bear knows where that campsite is. Like you know, your chances are you're not camping in such a remote place that nobody's ever camped there before. The bear knows that people camp there, right? Remember, we're talking about spatio-temporal memory. The bear, good chance. The bear has found food in that place before, and then maybe there's food that's been sealed up. But guess what? The bear can still see it. It sees that it looks like food. Bears have an excellent sense of eyesight as well.
Speaker 2:Note to self yes, my understanding is the whole hang. The change in some of the thinking about hanging is because bears have have learned, and or been taught by mom, to figure, to see ropes and disable the rope in order to get the hang to come down, as opposed to climb the tree and go out on this skinny little branch and have the whole thing break. All that sort of jazz, Yep.
Speaker 3:I mean, we see every flavor of it, right, we see them. We see them chew through the ropes. I've got this whole file on my computer of, just like the videos and the photos. It's. It's honestly fun to to look at.
Speaker 3:But, you know, chew the ropes, um, send a cub, or even, you know, mom will go out on the branch and then, you know, just break the entire branch off, which you know we've heard stories of bears getting injured doing that. They're so focused on the food that they neglect their own safety. And then suddenly you've got a terribly injured bear in the backcountry, or you've got these bears that are total acrobats and they will literally shimmy out on the line. There's this incredible photo of this. It's actually a bird feeder on a steel cable but the bear is just shimmying out the line. You know, probably, I don't know 15, 20 meters down the line, um, and then, just you know, at one point it just hangs on by its mouth on the line and then it gets back on the line and then tears the bird feeder down and it's, it's. It's unbelievable.
Speaker 2:Fine, I'll stop hanging man. Let's talk a little bit about your, about the manufacturing process. How does it, how does that all work? And then I know you guys have some good philosophies about how did what, what your intent is while you're manufacturing. Share some of that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely so. Um, bare vaults are are made here in in the States. Um, which normally is like a really great thing. Right now, Um, being being in the States might not be as as great of a thing as as sometimes it it seems like, but, um, you know we're proud that, that we're making it with with people who are are compensated fairly and, you know, are made right. You know it's. They're not made in sweat shops, you know, in in Southeast Asia or something like that. So you know we're proud that everything happens here in the States. Everything comes to Colorado from from a few different spots in the States and we hand finish, hand inspect and hand pack everything here in the States, cause we really want to stand by the canisters that are going out there. We know that people are putting a lot of trust in these products to do it right, and so we want to make sure we're putting our best foot forward and providing something that people can really trust. So the plastic molding happens in the US. We come here and do some final post-processing on it to get it all ready and then we're sending it out.
Speaker 3:You know we work with a lot of different retailers here, both in the States and in Canada. You know we're in, we're in Meck, you know, and a few of the other smaller retailers throughout some of the provinces especially. You know I'd say we're most popular in BC and Alberta and, you know, becoming more popular in the paddling communities in Ontario, Quebec, even Saskatchewan. So that's how we're getting the product out there. And then, just as a company, we really are an ethics-first company. Yes, the company is technically a an ethics first company, you know. Yes, the company is. You know it's technically a for-profit structured company, but if you were to look at our day-to-day operations and how we work, it might really look more like like a nonprofit in a lot of ways.
Speaker 3:You know our mission is to keep bears healthy and keep ecosystems thriving and you know selling canisters is is less important to us than seeing bears that are. And you know selling canisters is less important to us than seeing bears that are thriving, you know. You know seeing people that are going out and having, you know, adventures in the backcountry where you know they see a bear and it's the best part of their trip because it was a healthy interaction and not the worst part of their experience because the bear was aggressive and lacked that fear and maybe tore apart their tent or even something worse. There's plenty of horror stories out there online of things that go wrong with bears, and when we see people having safe, fun, joyful excursions into the back country and healthy bears, that's, that's a win in our book. So we're really aligned with a lot of the nonprofit organizations, especially down here in the States. We've got um, like the long trails, like the Pacific crest trail, the Appalachian trail, the Connell divide trail, um, we're big partners with them. Along with Leave no Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics is actually headquartered just up the street from us here in Boulder, colorado, and so we work really closely with them and a lot of you know we go back and forth on research and our, like safety messaging has been hand in hand with the team out there, and so we work really hard, not just to, you know, collaborate those organizations, but we try to educate the people who purchase our products to to go out and use them Right, cause you also can use it totally wrong.
Speaker 3:You know we hear these stories about people will say, oh my gosh, a bear got into my bear vault. We'll say, oh my gosh, well, what happened, how'd that happen? And say, oh well, I didn't put the lid on it and we'll say, well, that's, that's a feeding trough. You know that's not a bear canister. You know, and, and so we, we really try to, you know, encourage people to understand not just how to use it but also why they're using it, and that you know their choices really matter.
Speaker 3:You know it's like a bear accesses food even once, and that that bear's life is is completely changed. You know, you remember, I don't know, maybe 30 years ago it was like you know drugs, not even once. You know it was like the, like the, the catchphrase you know for kids, and it's kind of the same thing with bears. It's like human food, not even once. You know for for a bear. And you know people who are going out there have a real responsibility to, to take care of that ecosystem and uh, and also tell their friends you know, um, and I think people need to know, like especially down here in the States, where it's a legal requirement, that you know not just that that it's required to carry a canister, but also why they're doing it and that there's a real purpose behind it rather than just a bureaucratic policy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because bureaucrats get it wrong all the time. Yeah, they really do. If it makes sense for other reasons, absolutely dive in on that, all right. So you mentioned Mecca up here and some smaller uh uh, I assume outfitters or something along those lines, or smaller retailers. Where are some of the places that get carried in the states? Our listeners are largely north american, worldwide, but, but mostly and and it's not quite 50 50 canada and the us, but but lots of them will want to know where they can buy them tariff-free.
Speaker 3:Totally, yeah, yeah, no kidding. So they're in REI here down in the States. It's probably our biggest retailer, but we also sell a lot through our website, and so we ship direct-to-consumer, and so you know we ship direct to consumer. We also have a warehouse just south of you guys in Ancaster, Hamilton area in Ontario, and that's a great way. We have inventory up there before all of this tariff madness, and so our pricing is. You know we'll see what happens in time and there's still you's still long ways to go. Right now through our website, it's probably the best price you can find out there in Canada shipping from our warehouse in Ancaster.
Speaker 2:All right. Note to self, I've been toying with the idea of getting one or two A lot of the times. I backcountry with our eldest and he's six foot two and this big around, but he eats about double what I do.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, I'm sure he eats like a you know that metabolism right, it's crazy, man, it's crazy.
Speaker 2:So Ancaster, oh, somewhat off topic but Ancaster. So I know you did the Toronto Outdoor Adventure Show. Have you heard about the Hamilton Adventure Expo?
Speaker 1:Adventure Expo. Yes, yes, I heard. Have you heard about the Hamilton?
Speaker 2:adventure expo. Adventure expo yes.
Speaker 3:Yes, I heard great things. I heard that every like, both from a perspective of people who attended and the people exhibited, that it was a total blast. So we've been in touch with the folks that um that put it on. I'm not sure if it's in the cards for us or not to make it out next year. Um, it's. It's always tricky to figure out where we can go, especially as Bare Vault's a really small team. We're a family run company and so whenever we come out to a show it means we're probably not somewhere else. So it's always a tough choice, but I've heard really good things about that show.
Speaker 2:Okay, cool, yeah I just. If you've got a warehouse in Ancaster, that's where the show is, that's perfect and it was awesome. It will totally be your target audience, for sure. That's where the show is, so that's perfect and it was awesome. It will totally, totally be your, your target audience, for sure. That's super cool.
Speaker 3:I guess, just the. The one other thing that I would, I would leave you guys with, you know, is just, um, you know, for you guys and for your listeners, you know, I think, when this is all, when, when people take care of bears, it really, it really can make a difference. You know, there are our case studies. So there was this place in Colorado. Um, that, um, the human bear conflict had just had just gotten out of hand. Several bears had been euthanized and even even still, um, it just seemed like the conflict was getting worse. There actually were some really scary incidents. Somebody got drug out of a tent, and these are black bears, these aren't grizzly bears, I mean just the stuff that's, you know, that you don't even like to talk about. And you know, people, people weren't heading out there because it it seemed, you know, suddenly dangerous and suddenly bears were not these forest friends but but rather, you know, something to be feared, and that's, that's never what we want. And so they implemented one of these canister requirements and a robust education program and in five years the amount of human-bear conflicts decreased 98%. And what I would just challenge people to say is well, clearly the canisters work, but the human-bear conflict doesn't have to reach that much of a crisis level in the first place.
Speaker 3:You don't need those really scary encounters or bears euthanized to start carrying a canister Even when the government is not telling us, hey, you need to carry this. We as individuals can make choices that it might be a sacrifice. You know, maybe a canister is a little bit heavier. You know we of course have to purchase a canister too and we recognize that that's a barrier to entry. But you know when we're going out into the backcountry we're going into what's ultimately that bear's home. You know we also can be proactive and preventative of that human-bear conflict and that food conditioning from happening in the first place.
Speaker 3:So I would just challenge the listeners of this podcast to really think about the choices you're making in the backcountry, whether that's Bear Vault or some other bear-resistant product on the market. I'd encourage you to think about your food storage and also take some time, take a bear safety class and think about the conflicts side of it. And um, no, you know the things to do to prevent um encounters. You know, beyond just food and uh how to how to prevent um things from getting scary in the back country too. So we just just encourage people. It's a great time of year, early in the season, to do your homework, get educated. There's great free online resources out there and tell your friends.
Speaker 1:That's awesome.
Speaker 2:That is yeah. I love the approach of this is a better thing for the bears.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Well, and the importance of that. It's not just about one bear becoming a nuisance bear. It's about the whole ecosystem that they live in being affected by it and subsequent generations of bears and subsequent campers that are going to camp in the same campsite. As you are Like. You need to think outside of your own little individual needs.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 3:It's a tough thing these days. Indeed, indeed. Well, I just thank you both so much for the opportunity to come on the Super Good Camping podcast, and it's just been so much fun chatting with you guys this evening.
Speaker 1:Likewise Grant.
Speaker 2:Very much so. Yeah, yeah, I was worried I was going to run out of things to, but it was like, oh, that's really interesting.
Speaker 3:all the fun details bear science and they're amazing, like I, I, I keep you know, I'm, I'm in the research space and, you know, learn a lot of things, but I mean almost monthly. I learned something new about about these creatures and the way they work and I'm like what?
Speaker 1:No way, you know they're they're just incredible.
Speaker 2:Yeah, cool, I, I, I. I've had a few experiences. All of my experiences have been kind of like no big deal, because it's because we've been, they haven't been. We had one that was in. No, we had two actually that were in front country campgrounds rooting around in fire pits and but yeah, but a nice, a nice big hey, and away they go. That's so, thankfully, not too habituated. But I can't, I can't even fathom a black bear dragging somebody out of a tent, like that's just. That's beyond anything I would ever have thought was possible.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, so we try not to focus on those sides of it, but hopefully we can keep it from getting there, right?
Speaker 2:yeah, I'm with you, brother.
Speaker 1:Uh, okay, we're gonna wrap up all right, that's it for us for today. Thank you so much to grant breidenbach from bear vault for joining us and sharing all that information, and we'll have to hear more all about bears some other time, but please do check them out. Uh, bear vaultcom is that the website?
Speaker 3:grant, that's the bear vault, perfect.
Speaker 1:Perfect, and so check them out. And, if you're shopping around, educate yourself about bear resistant food containers and please do check us out. We're on all the social media and you can email us anytime at hi at supergoodcampingcom. That's hi at supergoodcampingcom, and we will talk to you again soon. Bye, bye, awesome.
Speaker 3:Oh, that was so much fun.
.jpg)