Worse Thing Found at a Cache Site?

[+craigfowler]

Just wondering what was the worst thing you have encountered while geocaching.

 

Until today it was human waste. Today I was mortified to discover the head/pelt of a caribou within feet of a cache I was looking for. It is very likely this animal was poached in the area as it is close to a residential area and caribou are not commonly seen in this area.

 

I issued a warning to others on my log for the find that this was not an appropriate place to go until the remains are removed. I then called wildlife to report the find. The good news is I could give them coordinates of the location as it was right next to the cache.

 

I was very thankful I did not have my son or daughter with me on this find.

[+webscouter.]

I found a 35MM film canister at a cache site a couple of times. Pocket queries have resolved that issue for me.

[+ibycus]

Just wondering what was the worst thing you have encountered while geocaching.

 

Until today it was human waste. Today I was mortified to discover the head/pelt of a caribou within feet of a cache I was looking for. It is very likely this animal was poached in the area as it is close to a residential area and caribou are not commonly seen in this area.

 

I issued a warning to others on my log for the find that this was not an appropriate place to go until the remains are removed. I then called wildlife to report the find. The good news is I could give them coordinates of the location as it was right next to the cache.

 

I was very thankful I did not have my son or daughter with me on this find.

 

I've never found anything too nasty. Worst I've come across is what was probably the remains of some drug paraphernalia (no sharps though). Did come across an old pornographic magazine during a CITO once.

 

I've heard of people discovering human remains while caching though, which would pretty well top any list we cared to make.

[danoshimano]

My worst was a ground zero search that had been shat upon, which I didn't notice and got all over myself.

[+lordfishman]

I did a cache in toronto where someone stuffed a dead squirrel into the cache container. Needless to say the cache was archived after that.

 

And I found a dead cat by a cache once in on a caching trip to Pennsylvania

[ertyu]

Several bags of dog crap (who hides these?), a cache like container full of drugs, a purse full of drug paraphernalia, a pet coffin with remains, a frozen bucket shaped porcupine, discarded clothing and then the owner(s) of the clothing, a hooker, homeless men relieving themselves indoors and out, and worst of all, nothing.

[danoshimano]

...and worst of all, nothing.

 

[+CAMOKELLY]

Ya porn, animal crap, drugs, dirty diapers, and animal remains from a fresh kill.

Edited October 13, 2008 by TESKELLY

[Mickey100]

-An old chunk of carpet soaked in slaughterhouse blood next to a popular hiking trail, to attract bears, so as to discourage hikers from the area. What a stink.

 

-A homeless person's backpack, with all their worldly possessions, which I left.

 

-Old boards from childrens' forts, with the 3-inch nails pointing up, which I always move away and flip over, so they won't pose a vicious hazard when there is 4 inches of snow on the ground. Who would have thought that safety boots are required for this hobby. If you haven't seen any yet, you are quite new to the hobby. I had to move my letterbox to a completely different part of town, after the place became a boys' fort area.

 

-The writings and thoughts of a despondent person who was wondering if life was still worth living, - found on the nearby seat of a gazebo. (This was a tough re-direct to find; I was there more than once.) Then one day, the young pregnant woman herself was there. I think it was the same person, and I chatted with her. I spoke as kindly to her as I could, gave her my best advice, and said a prayer for her when I left, but no - I don't know the outcome, I was caching in another town. Tragic. She was young enough to be my granddaughter.

[+Tequila]

Fake handgrenade and a pickle bottle full of marijuana. Not together.

[ertyu]

I have a new one to add from today's outing.

 

Arrived to find the cache on fire.

[+Ducky]

I have a new one to add from today's outing.

 

Arrived to find the cache on fire.

 

And now for the rest of the story....

[+Juicepig]

dead guy - Someone who jumped off a bridge and landed 20 feet from the stage of a multi i was doing.. I found him just as the police arrived.. awkward...

 

Dead racoon - right on top of the cache.. I decided to photo-log that one

 

Mysterious bucket of pig meat - happened to swifteroo, got to GZ, found a bucket. Thinking it was the geocache he opened it only to find very VERY rotten pig meat. literally knocked to the ground, Vomiting ensued.

[+brenda&&rew]

At the entrance to the trail where a cache was hidden someone decided it would be a good place to leave a garbage bag full of the parts of a hunting kill that they did not need... such as the hide, internal organs, etc. Unfortunately, the bag was ripped open and the "stuff" was no longer all in the bag.

 

I didn't like seeing or smelling it, but I hated that both my daughters did. They are teenagers, not little girls anymore, but they were upset at what they had to walk past.

[+geocite]

- discarded woman's underwear with a menstrual pad still attached...ugg...we grabbed a long stick to retrieve it and deposited it and the stick in a nearby garbage can.

[Barnie's Band of Gold]

I found a 35MM film canister at a cache site a couple of times.

and other forms of micros

[+CAMOKELLY]

I had a poor cacher email me with some bad news. They found my cache and noticed right away it was full of water. To their complete disbelief it turned out not to be water but human urine. Seems someone took the time to open the cache, pee into the container almost filling it, and then carefully replacing the lid. How sick is that? Muggles are loosers I tell ya

[savant9]

I had a poor cacher email me with some bad news. They found my cache and noticed right away it was full of water. To their complete disbelief it turned out not to be water but human urine. Seems someone took the time to open the cache, pee into the container almost filling it, and then carefully replacing the lid. How sick is that? Muggles are loosers I tell ya

 

Which one was that?? Time to start skipping all TESKELLY caches...

[danoshimano]

I had a poor cacher email me with some bad news. They found my cache and noticed right away it was full of water. To their complete disbelief it turned out not to be water but human urine. Seems someone took the time to open the cache, pee into the container almost filling it, and then carefully replacing the lid. How sick is that? Muggles are loosers I tell ya

 

How do you know it was a muggle?

[+CAMOKELLY]

I certainly hope it was a muggle and not someone out there who's mad at me or playing games. I had this cache found by another cacher thrown all over the park just a few weeks before so who ever it is knows the cache location. I assumed it was a muggle as this little park is in is a out of the way area in Abbotsford with only one road in and is very popular with teens holding parties cause the cops don't patrol the area much.

[+TDTN4fun]

Worst we found so far were used needles near the cache - not in it. Also found a knife in the bushes where a cache was hanging in the tree above. That one was a little scary because we just saw the end of it and it looked a little like a micro canister...thankfully I used a stick to poke it first and saw what it really was.

[+doingitoldschool]

A bag of old dynamite:

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/log.aspx?LU...07-9e158a78592f

[+stagunner]

burnt up pick up,,on the way in

I poked around the truck after finding a nearby cache

and subsequently found a small arms cache

a rifle and a shotgun, so I escorted the police to the spot,

 

So register your guns for everyones safety.

[+LEGO]

For me, it was a previously signed logbook

[+The red-haired witch]

A bag of old dynamite:

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/log.aspx?LU...07-9e158a78592f

 

I'd like to congratulate you on your survival and on your demonstration of common sense (that not so common thing) in not touching it ... There are too many not so bright people who like to pick up the bomb and drive it to the nearest police station .

 

By the way, for people who may not know, old dynamite is more dangerous than new dynamite. Really old dynamite can leak nitroglycerin. Shock sensitive... Just dropping a rock on the bag might have been very very bad. Think Wile E. Coyote bad.

[+northernpenguin]

My worst so far has to be the bag of white powder where the cache was supposed to be - as the "Federal" police were driving into the same parking lot. This was just outside a tourist icon in Mexico (Mayan Ruins). That was also the last physical cache I went looking for while I was in Mexico. Not really all that interested in explaining why I'm standing over that 'cache' with a GPS in my hand....

[+D-Roc]

So far a large, decaying, stinky fish.

[+UBC Geograd]

Was looking for a micro in Calgary once, and I was reaching over things, under things, and then I saw a syringe with the needle still attached.... That ended my hunt quickly.

 

I also had one of my caches muggled last spring. All that the idiots left was the log book Ziplock bag, and put dog crap inside it with the log book. That was somewhat disgusting....

[+NullLifeException]

The worst I've found, personally, was a cache site surrounded by broken beer bottles, discarded women's shoes, an open jar of vaseline, and God knows what else was around there. Oh, and I'm pretty sure there was human waste somewhere in the vicinity.

 

My friend, Duli42, has found 3" jack knives and lighters at trade items. Apparently not everyone reads the rules.

[+Couparangus]

This is a strange topic but let's see....in no particular order: human feces, urine, marijuana, hashish, death-bag, dead deer, dead raccoon, spent condom and underwear. I haven't been *lucky* enough to find a human torso or foot - or anything like that.

Edited November 25, 2008 by Couparangus

[+stagunner]

there should have been a close call in Glace Bay as the remains of a person were found just this past week,

And very close to a set of caches along an old train track system, I am surprised that some cachers did not find it.

 

Sadly but I hope it brings some closure to somebody.

[hawtway]

Just wondering what was the worst thing you have encountered while geocaching.

 

Until today it was human waste. Today I was mortified to discover the head/pelt of a caribou within feet of a cache I was looking for. It is very likely this animal was poached in the area as it is close to a residential area and caribou are not commonly seen in this area.

 

I issued a warning to others on my log for the find that this was not an appropriate place to go until the remains are removed. I then called wildlife to report the find. The good news is I could give them coordinates of the location as it was right next to the cache.

 

I was very thankful I did not have my son or daughter with me on this find.

[hawtway]

I'm sure I saw a geocache behind Dion, one of the three stooges during his U-tube movie on Dec 4. That could certainly bring disrepute upon our honourable pursuit. However, it might be just; Hot Air.

[Mr.Yuck]

Nothing that bad here. But I did find a cache site, in the bushes off of a rails to trails, where there were hundreds of piles of dog feces. The same dog probably came by every day for a year or two, and did his duty in the same spot. I should mention, this was actually an archived cache site. I was doing a locationless cache, "Go back to your roots" (re-visit your first ever geocaching find). It didn't matter if the cache was still in existence or not.

[+danieloliveira]

In a search for a micro ; in one of those locations where you can hide an elephant and a mini bus, I stumbled upon a tightly packed bag with two broken sheets of glass and in between the sheets was a very wet sheet of paper with some very nasty words. The text meant harm and all kinds of bad things to this one particular guy.

The only thing missing was the doll with all the pins stuck in it.

 

C R E E P Y!

[Clan Riffster]

I found a 35MM film canister at a cache site a couple of times.

Thanx! Now I gotta change my pants!

I've found just about everything you can imagine, stumbling about in the woods.

One of the more interesting items was a bulging, unlabelled can I found inside a cache.

Here's a truncated excerpt from my log:

 

then I found what appeared to be a mini canned ham. At least, it was shaped like a canned ham. The label was gone, so I didn't know what was in it. The can had started to rust, and was swelling, so I figured I best remove it before it popped. I checked the log, but couldn't see where anybody had placed it. What to do, what to do?...When in doubt, do what's right. Took the can of unknown contents, left <snip>.

 

And now for the rest of the story;

Those who know me, know that I'm not the brightest bulb in the chandelier. I often do things that, in retrospect, were probably not very smart. This adventure was no exception. I got back to the hacienda, and the contents of the mystery can kept praying on my poor overworked brain. I had to know what was in there! At Viv's insistence, I took it outside, well away from the house, and yanked on the pull tab. OH MY GOD! The stench would've knocked a buzzard off a gut wagon at 50 paces! The contents looked like cut up squid parts, but I didn't look closely enough to be sure. After a few vigorous scrubbings, my hands have lost enough of the odor of rotten suishi to be allowed in the house.

[QuigleyJones]

Gotta say it was a cacher signing a blank log, left me horrified.

[+SuperDave_GPS]

.. Hmmm...

Well, there was about 40% of a deer sitting (laying) about 3 meters away from a Barrie cache.

 

There was one just off the highway between Toronto and Cambridge at a park-n-ride lot that had about 30% of an eaten deer and a fully intact wolf laying beside it. It was MUCH too big to be a coyote, and look very much like a wolf, so that's what I'm saying it was. The wolf looked in such good shape that I could have sworn that it was still alive and just sleeping after eating the deer. Fastest log book I ever signed..

 

Then when I moved to Ottawa, I had to walk around this fence to get to the cache only to doscover a guy standing out in the bushes with no top on standing there with his hands on his hips like Superman does. As strange as I thought it was, I cautiously approached only to discover his girlfriend's head pop up from the bushes as she was "servicing" him...

 

As for the worst cache itself, just a log book shoved inside of a plain old plastic grocery bag that was placed under a wooden train track joist to prevent the bag from blowing away...

 

Half points for creativity, I guess...

[+leawelter]

Found a cache south of Edmonton that was in the same grove of trees that the highway clean up guys had been useing to put road kill. I was glad I had no kids with me as some of the deer were fresh, and worse yet some were not, but the magots were.

[jffilley]

just last night my brother and i found a cache surrounded by 10 to 15 deer carcuses most likely poachers.

[+Emtplatt13]

Found a black widow spider at a cache location. She was guarding the thing. Knowing that kids participate and we sure didn't want anyone else to encounter her....we sent her to spider heaven or whereever they go. This thread is disturbing.

We also found a crack pipe and other drug use items.

We went to a cache located in an old fruit stand off the freeway hidden in the overgrown woods....we looked inside and something was looking back...we haul A** out of there. Got home and read the logs about a giant attack bird thing that would come out and chase cachers...well thankful that didn't happen cause if it had....then you would have found human waste at that cache site.

EMT

[+aflieder]

I picked up a female friend to show her what I was talking about when I told her I was going out Geocaching, and We went out to the Strathcona Science Park which is alongside the North Saskatchewan River here in Edmonton's east side...

We were working on the last couple of caches for the day, and we kept hearing a lot of sirens nearby. Of course, we wondered what was going on, but didn't have a clue.

Just as we were about to try to find GCXQD1 (Don't Let Them Steal My Gold!), which is on a bridge that crosses the river, we finally figured out where all the sirens were going to... Right below us on the west side of the river, where a few hikers discovered the body of a woman who was washed ashore on the bank of the river. Needless to say, we didn't end up finding that cache, and left after we seen the rescue crews finish thier job.

 

from the log of the previous cache that we found: "... scary sidenote... when I was in the park doing these 6 caches, I heard a pile of sirens from the other side of the river, and then when I was down on the trail right beside the river, I watched the firemen pull a deceased body from the west side of the river... This was at about 6:30 p.m..."

 

We were maybe 150' away from the action, but the next cache we would have done would have been right beside the action....

 

Sad to say, it was reported that it was the body of a young lady 18-24 years old.

 

It was a memorable experience for the lady friend and I... I wonder if she will want to go geocaching with me again....

[+Team TeeKay]

One right now in the Qualicum Beach area of Vancouver Island that has an extremely large , deceased and headless sealion who is making his final resting place right close to the cache. With the weather as of late, if you hit the cache area at the right time, the smell is very aromatic. I took some pictures on my Iphone, should try to uploas them.

[moko_marana]

Ah, the headless sealion! We met him last week. As soon as we caught a whiff of that fragrance, we left the dog in the car -- but he was frantically trying to get out, seeing as how there was a 1300lb carcass just begging to be rolled in!

 

A few months ago, the co-ordinates to one cache took us directly to a ditch filled with the rotten corpse of a large herbivore (deer? horse?) mixed with old couch cushions. It was an awful combination. We stood at the top of the ditch, gagging at the smell, wondering if we ought to poke around with a stick or just leave it. In the end, we decided to come back after the miracle of decomposition had run its course.

Edited May 1, 2009 by moko_marana