mikeslomka

What he said. By the way 57chevy, you are right, a lot of coon hunters are blow-hards. I wanted to use another word, but this is a family friendly forum. To kind of get back to the original thread, my point was that many times, people will say things that they generally wouldn't because they feel safe and anonymous hiding behind their computer. Again, not an indictment of anybody, just a generalization. And I am fully aware that there are exceptions to every rule.

That is one reason that I use my real name. I think that sometimes it is too easy for people to hide behind screen names. They don't feel like they are accountable, because the chances of them running into somebody that knows who they really are is slim. By the way, I'm certainly not accusing anybody, just stating my opinion. I think you're right up to a point. However, if you look in the profiles of some of the most highly opinionated (often precieved rude depending which side of the fence you're on) forum people, often you will find someone who regularly attends geocaching events. In the worst of the worst, you'll find little or no event attendance. In other forum communities that DON'T have that social aspect, you are most certainly right. I have absolutely no problem with somebody that states their opinion. In fact, I believe that everybody is entitled to their opinion. That being said, I also believe that once somebody publicly states their opinion, they don't have the right to get upset when somebody publicly disagrees with them. I do think that MOST times, this can be done in a respectful manor. I also think that there is always going to be the "troll" aspect of internet message boards. Some people just have nothing better to do than to go somewhere and ruin somebody elses good time. Maybe that is why their is little or no event attendence for the worst offenders. Maybe they aren't really cachers, just people out to stir the pot. In one of the coonhunting communities that I belong to, everybody is required to use their real names. I find that it is much more friendly than a lot of message boards. That being said, there are still a couple of blowhards.

That is one reason that I use my real name. I think that sometimes it is too easy for people to hide behind screen names. They don't feel like they are accountable, because the chances of them running into somebody that knows who they really are is slim. By the way, I'm certainly not accusing anybody, just stating my opinion.

A friend of mine got a whole pallet of them for next to nothing at a gunshow. He said that have them all the time, and the more that you buy, the cheaper they get. The scary part is, he bought them BEFORE he started caching.

I asked the same thing actually. When they went across, it hadn't been raining and the river wasn't as high. They were able to cross at a natural dam. I guess the dogs swan across.

I had some friends get lost coon hunting about 2 months back. There was 5 of them, and the guy that lived in the area just swore that he knew where the truck was. It was rainging hard and there was no moon. They finally got all of the dogs coralled, and they had just decided that they were going to have to spend the night in the woods when one of the guys remembered that they dog that he had left in the truck still had his tracking collar on. They turned on the tracking collar and walked about 2 miles in the opposite direction. After a quick and scary swim across a river, they made it back with all of the dogs and all of the people ok. I have never been that lost, when I get turned around, I just tell my dog to "load up". She starts back to the truck and I follow her. If she gets to far ahead, shr comes back and gets me.

I haven't been doing this long, but I have noticed recently, with the new snow, that many paths that go to caches that have been in place for a while have wildlife tracks all over them. In some of the areas that I hunt, I see old well used tracks that are used daily by wildlife. In fact, my friends and I have even seen deer use our paths on the same day as us. While we do some damage to the environment, make no mistake that mother earth can take care of herself. The beaten paths we see in the fall and winter will most likely return in a season or two. My only concern as a cache owner would be that a new path in an otherwise heavily wooded area would make finding the cache too easy.

I work for a police department as a dispatcher, and I am a new cacher. I went around to all of the caches in the city I work in and dropped a plastic "Junior Police" badge into them(except micros of course). One of the officers I work with wants to put one close enough to the station that we can watch it, but far enough away so that it won't cause a stir.

Does that mean I can leave my wife in a cache and somebody will take her????

As coon hunters, my friends and I spend a lot of time in the woods at night. A few times, I noticed tents where they really shouldn't be. I figured that it was just kids trying to find a little seclusion for partying or romance. Shortly after that, a friend pointed out that they are actually disposable meth labs. The meth makers set up, cook up, then just leave everything. The same friend was shot at a few weeks before that when he got to close to one of these disposable labs. He was in the army for many years, plus he has been hunting since he was old enough to carry a gun, so a few answering shots seemed to scare off the occupants of the lab. He took some deputies ouut the next day and they called in all sorts of hazmat people to ismantle the place. I talked to some of the narcotics officers that I work with, and they told me that these disposable labs are becoming a real big thing. This meth is some scary stuff, and the nuts that cook it are even scarier. Be careful out there.

Today I was in a park in the city that I work in. I was looking for a cache, and it is in an area where high school age kids sometimes hang out and smoke and do other nefarius things. As I was walking in, I saw an elderly lady walk in behind me. I kept up my same pace and watched her out of the corner of my eye everytime I made a turn. I thought that maybe she would take another trail but she chose mine. I walked a couple hundred feet past the the cache and turned around. I thought that I would let her go past me and then I would find the cache. As soon as she passed each other though, she stopped and turned around and watched me leave. In fact, she watched me all the way to my truck. I called my partner(the other dispatcher for our police department) and told her that she would probably be getting a call. She did. I wasn't even off the trail.

As a police dispatcher, I can tell you that I know all of the whiners and complainers in my town. Trust me, the local pd probably knows her too. She is probably calls them all the time and then threatens to call the chief if she doesn't get the response that she likes. So the officers get 20 feet from the entrance to the park and turn on the lights and siren, then they come flying into the park like they are there to save the world. She thinks that they have done something, and she goes away for a little while. I would most definitly walked over to the officer and explained what was going on. Unless OC spray is illegal in your area, there is nothing to worry about. Also, as you are walking up just ask, "Officer, is there a problem?" He/she will most likely come over to you and explain why she called, and then tell her what's going on. If the old gal doesn't like it...too bad. The only downside is that she may then go looking for the cache and destroy it so people will quit coming by. But she probably isn't motivated enough to do that.

Ummmm the IDEA is to replace with something of equal or GREATER value....not lesser. Oops, I guess my fingers got ahead of my brain. That happpens more and more these days. I did MEAN equal or greater value.

That is great!! I may have considered leaving the undergarments in the cache!!!

I'm VERY new to this, but I wouldn't dream of taking something and not replacing it with something of equal or lesser value. That's just the way I am. I can say, however, that thievery isn't just for muggles. We all like to think that members of our own groups are above that type of thing, but there are greedy and thoughtless people everywhere. A coworker and I are planning to go out and hit a couple of caches tomorrow on our lunch break. We both work for a police department, and thought that it would be kind of neat to take nothing, but leave some plastic "Junior Police" badges. We would limit the badges to caches only found in our city. We thought that it would be a cool little way to reach out to the community.

I have a really nice pair of boots and water resistant chaps that I wear for coon hunting. They come all the way up to the top of my thigh. They are thick rip-stop nylon, and have kept my jeans and my legs intact many nights in the woods. A good pair of leather work gloves also go a long way towards keeping your hands and wrists safe.

I am an avid coon hunter, and a new geocacher. Last week while I was out in the woods hunting, my dog sustained a fairly serious cut to her leg. I went back the next day, and found all sorts of broken glass. It looked like somebody had been shooting the stuff. I carried out what I could. That day, I added a small canvas sack and some garbage bags to my hunting kit. From now on when I see junk laying around, I fully intend to clean it up. It breaks my heart a little bit everytime I see a bunch of junk laying around in a pristine wilderness area. A folk singer friend of mine even wrote a sone about it called, "Who dropped this."

I just got a Magellan Explorist 300 for Christmas this year. My wife got it for me because I do a lot of coon hunting and sometimes end up in woods that I am not familiar with. Then I end up walking around those woods for a while looking for land marks. Or I end up using my compass to get me to the road and then walking to where ever I parked my truck. I decided that geocaching may be something fun for the whole family to get involved with. I went solo on my first cache hunt yesterday. I didn't find the cache, but I did meet some nice people when I locked my keys in my truck. In the ignition. In the ON position. I had to wait until today to get the keys, and of course the battery was dead. yada yada yada. Never one to get discouraged from one bad experience, I took my kids out with me today, and we found our first cache very quickly. My daughter(4 years old) also found a fake cache that was nearby. She liked it a lot. Said it was like being in the "Backyardigans"(please don't ask).