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Stealthless Group Caching


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Okay, I just wanted to get this off my chest and see what everyone else thought about it.

 

My girlfriend and I geocache together as a team. We always try to be aware of our surroundings and watch for muggles. We recently had a fellow local cacher leave us a very appreciated log entry stating that when they got to the cache site that there was a family of EIGHT looking for the cahe and attracting quite a lot of attention. The fellow cachers even went up to a pair of muggles watching the fiasco and explained to them about geocaching. Apparently a local business employee even came out and wondered what was going on.

 

I was just wondering if anyone else had issues with the whole team caching bit. I know of lots of cachers who hunt in teams, but aren't most people at least even a little stealthful??? Shouldn't there be some sort of ettiquite???

 

To end the story, I went out in the middle of the night to check on the cache, because I had filled it with lots of quality swag. Not to mention I was worried for the trackables that had been left in the care of my cache.

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Maybe big groups could rotate members between searching subsquad and a "distraction" subsqaud. Yeah,

we are just here playing hacky-sack (or making out on the bench, or fishing with our backs to the river, or playing frisbee in a bamboo forest, or whatever..........)

 

just amusing myself..... have fun out there

 

Shannon

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Maybe big groups could rotate members between searching subsquad and a "distraction" subsqaud. Yeah,

we are just here playing hacky-sack (or making out on the bench, or fishing with our backs to the river, or playing frisbee in a bamboo forest, or whatever..........)

 

just amusing myself..... have fun out there

 

Shannon

 

So there I was, in front of a movie theater with my old room mate... We plucked the micro from the flower box by the fountain and moved to another area to log it and prep it to be replaced. While we had the cache in hand, a 'roving group of rebellious youths' (you know, 10 kids that got dropped off by thier parents to see a movie) had taken up station on our flower box.... Dignity aside, and knowing I had a mission to complete, I handed him the cache, said "I only get one shot at this, make it count" and started running around the plaza flapping my arms and making animal noises. Long story short, ache was replaced and the kids never even noticed him.

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A family of 8 in the woods with no one else around won't attract much attention. A cache in town where families live will get a lot of attention.

 

I've given up on stealth tactics. I'll be direct, fast, discrete, but I'm not going to wear black ninja clothes and come at midnight. You hide it on a street corner I may pass on the cache, but if I don't I'll walk up with my GPS find zero, then look for your cache for all the world to see and all 20,000 cars wizzing bye.

 

The family did nothing wrong. They were participating in a family activity and found a cache. They are your audience. There are more families than ninjas. Keep that in mind when placing caches.

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So there I was, in front of a movie theater with my old room mate... We plucked the micro from the flower box by the fountain and moved to another area to log it and prep it to be replaced. While we had the cache in hand, a 'roving group of rebellious youths' (you know, 10 kids that got dropped off by thier parents to see a movie) had taken up station on our flower box.... Dignity aside, and knowing I had a mission to complete, I handed him the cache, said "I only get one shot at this, make it count" and started running around the plaza flapping my arms and making animal noises. Long story short, ache was replaced and the kids never even noticed him.

 

You're a hero. :P Caching needs more people like you.

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So there I was, in front of a movie theater with my old room mate... We plucked the micro from the flower box by the fountain and moved to another area to log it and prep it to be replaced. While we had the cache in hand, a 'roving group of rebellious youths' (you know, 10 kids that got dropped off by thier parents to see a movie) had taken up station on our flower box.... Dignity aside, and knowing I had a mission to complete, I handed him the cache, said "I only get one shot at this, make it count" and started running around the plaza flapping my arms and making animal noises. Long story short, ache was replaced and the kids never even noticed him.

 

I about died laughing! Kudos. :blink:

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A family of 8 in the woods with no one else around won't attract much attention. A cache in town where families live will get a lot of attention.

 

I've given up on stealth tactics. I'll be direct, fast, discrete, but I'm not going to wear black ninja clothes and come at midnight. You hide it on a street corner I may pass on the cache, but if I don't I'll walk up with my GPS find zero, then look for your cache for all the world to see and all 20,000 cars wizzing bye.

 

The family did nothing wrong. They were participating in a family activity and found a cache. They are your audience. There are more families than ninjas. Keep that in mind when placing caches.

I agree completely, if the cache is in a high muggle area that is the chance the owner has taken. Best to act like you belong there than draw attention by looking around for watchers.

Edited by crossphased
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If your cache is in a highly visible public area, it is going to draw attention sooner or later. People who live/work near there will become aware of it's presence. It's just a question of when and how.

 

Someone skulking around alone trying their darndest to look inconspicous is just as likely to draw notice as a group or people who boldy walk up to the spot and make the grab as though that was their main mission in life.

 

In fact, someone trying not to be noticed may actually draw more attention to the cache, and anyone who does notice them is much more likely to think that there is something suspicious going on at that spot. They'll approach the cache with a negative attitude and will need to be assured there is not a problem. They are more likely to telephone the police and report a potential bomb.

 

Which is more suspicous to you:

Family looking for something, kid finds it, they pass it around laughing and talking, they put it back and move on still talking and having fun.

Guy alone with some kind of electronic device looks around to make sure no one is looking, grabs 'something', does 'something' with it, puts it back, leaves quickly.

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I was caching out of town with a friend and we were in kind of a high muggle area. We found the cache and replaced it only to have someone come out of his store and shout, "Did you find it?". What could we say? He said that he watched people find the cache all the time and always asked whoever found it if there was something good inside... We tried to ignore him but he was looking right AT us.. Sometimes you just have to fess up, they probably know what's going on anyway.

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A family of 8 in the woods with no one else around won't attract much attention. A cache in town where families live will get a lot of attention.

 

I've given up on stealth tactics. I'll be direct, fast, discrete, but I'm not going to wear black ninja clothes and come at midnight. You hide it on a street corner I may pass on the cache, but if I don't I'll walk up with my GPS find zero, then look for your cache for all the world to see and all 20,000 cars wizzing bye.

 

The family did nothing wrong. They were participating in a family activity and found a cache. They are your audience. There are more families than ninjas. Keep that in mind when placing caches.

I agree completely, if the cache is in a high muggle area that is the chance the owner has taken. Best to act like you belong there than draw attention by looking around for watchers.

 

I can go both ways on this one. I am an old-school hike in the woods type guy, but I do occasionally find caches in high traffic parks. Placing caches in a high muggle area is definitely a chance the owner takes. :anibad: But a party of 8 should use some common sense, and excercise a little discretion. I remember one time I was looking for the 2nd leg of a multi in a City Park, and from a distance, I could see a party of four searching for the first leg, which was a thin magnet on baseball field bleachers. Man, did they look like a bunch of whack jobs!! I was embarrassed for my hobby. :D They never did log, so I don't know if they didn't post a DNF, or were non-online loggers.

 

I'd say there's a pretty good chance the party of 8 mentioned in the OP were newbies.

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My biggest concern about stealth is when someone hides an almost impossible to find small cache, places all kinds of misleading piles of rock and stuff around the area to make the finding even more difficult, asks for his fellow cachers to use every ounce of stealth to avoid discovery. It is placed on top of a hill in a vacant lot surrounded by houses and apartment complexes!!!

If this is where they want to place their caches then they could at least make them large enough to make a quick grab, log, and go.

I shake my head and leave and will take the dnf never to return.

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We've had several caches that were in high muggle areas.

 

One was in a lone tree across the street from a family that must be out in their yard 24-7. I saw it from a distance, but did not retrieve it. I did log it as found and explained I would try to return later to sign the log.

 

One was an ammo can in some bushes next to a driveway used by several restaurants and Sam's club. No way in heck to retrieve the cache during business hours. Cache owner probably should have suggested retrieving it at night or early in the morning.

 

I've been caught a couple of times by curious muggles, and I will take time to explain the 'game' and show them what we do. Some have been very interested and probably looked into it further. Might be a good idea to print some cards with a few websites on geocaching and give it to them to pique their interest.

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We've had several caches that were in high muggle areas.

 

<Snip>

 

One was an ammo can in some bushes next to a driveway used by several restaurants and Sam's club. No way in heck to retrieve the cache during business hours. Cache owner probably should have suggested retrieving it at night or early in the morning.

 

 

I went back and got the cache by Sam's Club early on Easter Sunday. Still had to wait for a couple of restaurant worker muggles to leave, and as I was walking towards the cache I noticed four different security cameras aimed in the general direction of the cache. They probably thought I was a homeless guy using the bushes for a bathroom!

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There is a very well known business in a very well known town near me, I have been all over this business, employee only areas, on the roof, etc even though I have never worked there. Anytime I have traipsed through the employee only area I have walked right by employees and not been stopped, why, because I act like I belong.

If you sneak around a street corner, hiding your GPS, looking over your sholder, trying to ignore people around you, you WILL attract attention. People WILL get curious about what you are hiding and why you are hiding it.

If you act like you know what you are doing, that you are not up to much special and you belong there then people will glance but lose interest.

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The best stealth is no stealth in many situations. Look like you belong there or working on something if a search is needed. Carry a clipboard or something else and appear as if you know what your doing. Looking around to see if your spotted only draws attention. You have to be confident otherwise you stick out as the weird suspicious guy hanging around too long doing who knows what.

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We had a large group search for a cache right in front of the movie theatre.

NO steath was used. However....as soon as the cache was located, we didn't just grab it...we all moved around and made a giant human shield so no one could see what we were doing. :lol:

We must have looked like a dozen cellphone goofs in a pile.

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My wife's old job used to involve her climbing up lamposts to retrieve air pollution tubes. She always said that the only time she was asked what she was up to by members of the public was when she was not wearing her bright yellow jacket.

 

I have a theory that wearing a fluorescent yellow jacket makes you invisible - I plan on trying it for urban geocaching sometime soon! ;)

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Hey everyone.. first off... just got started with this a few weeks ago.. It really is alot of fun. I mainly just grab the not far off the beaten path and those that are on my way from site to site..

 

good part for me is I am an inspector :D so getting out of my vehicle with clipboard and GPS and a probing rod looks completely normal as it is what I do when I do a site inspection.

 

So in plain site is the best way to be imo... just be direct about what you are doing and show purpose...

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Okay, I just wanted to get this off my chest and see what everyone else thought about it.

 

My girlfriend and I geocache together as a team. We always try to be aware of our surroundings and watch for muggles. We recently had a fellow local cacher leave us a very appreciated log entry stating that when they got to the cache site that there was a family of EIGHT looking for the cahe and attracting quite a lot of attention. The fellow cachers even went up to a pair of muggles watching the fiasco and explained to them about geocaching. Apparently a local business employee even came out and wondered what was going on.

 

I was just wondering if anyone else had issues with the whole team caching bit. I know of lots of cachers who hunt in teams, but aren't most people at least even a little stealthful??? Shouldn't there be some sort of ettiquite???

 

To end the story, I went out in the middle of the night to check on the cache, because I had filled it with lots of quality swag. Not to mention I was worried for the trackables that had been left in the care of my cache.

 

As a cache owner, I appreciate your thoughts and thank you. However, I have stopped putting things like "use stealth" or "replace the container where you found it" on my cache pages because folks are going to live in the moment when looking for my cache.

 

Instead, I focus more on my placements. I try to consider that if this cache is around for any amount of time, that boisterous family of 8 is going to eventually come looking. I imagine them at GZ and I ask myself, "will this area support this?" This approach has actually disqualified some otherwise good hiding spots but probably leads to better caches in the long run.

Edited by Team GeoBlast
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