Teenaged Muggle

[+v-hunter]

Here is a little background, back in July I took a friends teenaged son out with me so he could learn a little bit about using his GPS and geocaching. Since that time he has muggled 2 TB's that I dropped that evening and continued to return to one of the caches whenever they would go to the lake swimming. His father found out and managed to return the TB's to me. I logged them as a grab and will drop them far away from the teen. I also informed the owners of the four caches we went to, to possibly offset them from the original coords.

 

As of now he doesn't have an account with geocaching.com so I think the caches will be safe if moved a 100 feet in any direction. No coords no cache.

 

Did I handle this correctly and is there anything more I should try to do?

[+Lemon Fresh Dog]

Ouch! That's a tough one. When we take any non-cachers out, we always have to worry about them getting excited and "showing friends" then the friends show friends that show friends.......

 

All of a sudden, the cache is known amongst non-cachers and is in danger. However, how can you avoid this?

 

Recently, I taught a Geocaching course for the City of Calgary Parks and Recreation Dept. The class was comprised of about 30 people -- mostly families. What I did was have them build a cache, place a cache, then exchange coordinates and find each others caches. All of this gives the experience, but doesn't have them hunt "real" caches. It's a very controlled "lab".

 

To be honest, it also means that I can place several caches close to the downtown area where I teach the course and not have to bus them to an area that has something other than micros.

 

Then, I take the caches they created, hide them legitimately, and once they buy a GPSr they can hunt them and all the other 300,000 caches in the world. This way -- they have contributed to the hobby, understand the hobby, and I have not compromised the location of any real caches for those just casually interested.

 

There isn't much you can do about your situation now, but contacting the owners and having them moved is probably a really good idea.

[+v-hunter]

Well one of the owners has been in contact with me and since they no longer live in the area I will be moving the cache and checking up on another one for them.

[+Henki]

Recently, I taught a Geocaching course for the City of Calgary Parks and Recreation Dept. The class was comprised of about 30 people -- mostly families. What I did was have them build a cache, place a cache, then exchange coordinates and find each others caches. All of this gives the experience, but doesn't have them hunt "real" caches. It's a very controlled "lab".

 

To be honest, it also means that I can place several caches close to the downtown area where I teach the course and not have to bus them to an area that has something other than micros.

 

Then, I take the caches they created, hide them legitimately, and once they buy a GPSr they can hunt them and all the other 300,000 caches in the world. This way -- they have contributed to the hobby, understand the hobby, and I have not compromised the location of any real caches for those just casually interested.

 

There isn't much you can do about your situation now, but contacting the owners and having them moved is probably a really good idea.

 

Thank you for being a responsible trainer! We experienced problems in this area every year when a local school district has a tech training day. They use existing caches. The teachers stuff micros with their calling cards, leave caches out in the open, etc. We're trying to get them to contact a local cacher to work with the tech trainer. In this way we can set out special caches for their purpose (as you do) without the worry of them muggling our caches. Some local cachers had so many caches damaged by these teachers, that they made them all " members only" caches for a while.

 

To the OP - You did the right thing!