A great deal depends on where you are. In the Sierras, there is definitely a super-culture of bears that see hikers as a major source of food.

In the Smokies, virtually all bear-human incidents occur within a couple of miles of a road. The backcountry consists of hikers scaring away bears merely with their presence.

Outside GSMNP, there are plenty of bears. But in NC, they can be hunted legally and they DO NOT stick around for humans.

Look up and down the AT corridor. Thousands of hikers hang their food bags from little cords in an open shelter, maybe 5-7 feet off the ground. The concern is to keep mice away, not bears. You do NOT have bear problems along this corridor, except maybe Shenandoah NP and New Jersey, where the maintaining clubs place bear boxes or poles at all shelters.

Out west in the Rockies, things are even more varied. When I taught for NOLS, bear protocol was a big part of every couse brief. In the Wind River range, we might bear bag or cliff hang as necessary. There was a time when we even simply consolidated food bags on the ground at a kitchen area away from tents.

In the Absarokas, just 100 miles away, we were in Brother Grizz's back yard. Here, we used the triangle method of cook one place, hang another, and camp in a third. We slept with bear spray and required hikers to change clothing if they spilled food on themselves.

In the Lemhi range in Idaho, another mere 100 miles from the Absarokas, bears were so low a priority, we simply stacked food bags on the ground. We never had so much as a nibble.

It pays to know your region. In the southeast, I'll drape my food bag where I can see it from my hammock. If something goes after it, I want to know. I've encountered black bears dozens of times in the mountains, but only twice has one entered my camp. Both times were in the Rockies, I chased them away with relative ease.

Unless, I'm in a high-impact area, I'll go for the simplest hang that will keep small critters away. That often means a branch a few feet off the ground. But particularly here in the southeast, the possibility of bears is just not worth the probability of hurting yourself launching a rock and cord into the higher branches of a tree.