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Looking for advice regarding a muggled cache


letjahrise

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We hid our first cache (GC22RK4) in Jan in a nice park close to home and have enjoyed watching people find it.

 

Sadly our cache was recently muggled and all the contents of the cache were removed including two travel bugs. We spent an hour searching the entire area hoping to find the travel bugs. We did not find anything just the empty cache container.

 

We can't help but feel guilty and responsible for the stolen travel bugs. We searched around looking for a new hiding spot but didn't find any we like as much.

 

We wish to keep our cache alive perhaps even it's current hiding spot and we're looking for advice or suggestions as to whether this is a good idea. We were thinking of reducing the cache size from a small to a micro with just a logbook so that no one else will leave travel bugs behind for the thieves to possibly steal but are we just foolish to keep the cache in a location where it has been muggled before? Should we just cut our losses and find a new place to hide a cache?

 

Any suggestions or comments are greatly appreciated, thanks in advance!

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We hid our first cache (GC22RK4) in Jan in a nice park close to home and have enjoyed watching people find it.

 

Sadly our cache was recently muggled and all the contents of the cache were removed including two travel bugs. We spent an hour searching the entire area hoping to find the travel bugs. We did not find anything just the empty cache container.

 

We can't help but feel guilty and responsible for the stolen travel bugs. We searched around looking for a new hiding spot but didn't find any we like as much.

 

We wish to keep our cache alive perhaps even it's current hiding spot and we're looking for advice or suggestions as to whether this is a good idea. We were thinking of reducing the cache size from a small to a micro with just a logbook so that no one else will leave travel bugs behind for the thieves to possibly steal but are we just foolish to keep the cache in a location where it has been muggled before? Should we just cut our losses and find a new place to hide a cache?

 

Any suggestions or comments are greatly appreciated, thanks in advance!

 

Oh please, not a micro. They are so boring. If everyone hid a micro then there wouldn't be any travelbugs because they won't fit in micros. We who send TBs know the risks. Do let the TB owners know what happen so they don't wonder where their TBs have gone.

 

This is a learning experience for you. I read through the logs and many of them mention a very muggly area, plus an area teens like to hang out in. Find a quiet spot, away from kids and teens and other muggles. Losing a cache to muggles or nature is simply the chance we take when we play this game. Do your best, try to hide well, place a cache size with wide appeal and then hope for the best.

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I agree with what Lone R said: micros are boring. Finding a micro cache is never as exciting as finding a real cache. Finding a larger cache gives us an excuse to sit down and sift through the trade items, take some pictures of the location etc. Finding a micro means we take ten minutes trying to extricate the logbook and then we're back on the road. :ph34r:

 

There's no need to feel guilty for the lost bugs. Caches do get Muggled and it's something every Geocacher knows. Sometimes these Muggled caches contain Travel Bugs and it's a risk TB owners take when they release their bug. It's not your fault. :ph34r:

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Here, here to the NO MICROS sentiment.

 

Real caches get muggled once in awhile...a fact of life I guess. But even a missing, muggled real cache is light years better than a boring micro.

 

I'm waiting for gc.com to open their eyes to the fact that there is a faction who enjoy 3m walks to lampposts to find old film canisters with soggy paper and no pencil. (Or the ever popular magnetic key holder which is the leakiest container on the planet.) (Or, the exciting nano cache which always seems to include getting muggles involved.) There is also a faction who look on these type of caches as a complete bastardization of Geocaching roots. Lets have one site for lame micros, and another for real caches.

 

Wouldn't it be exciting if we knew that when a cache was published we were in for:

- a roundtrip hike of 300,400,500 metres or more

- a real cache container at the end of the hike, with minimum specifications on water/weather-proofedness (sp?) and size

- a real logbook and not a spindly hard-to-handle/impossible to replace roll of paper

- and, God forbid...trading swag?!

 

This game has gone downhill since the automobile GPS's came out. And newbies who are joining the game are finding these lame micros...and thinking "oh..this is what geocaching is about....there's a nice trash can down the street I could hide a magnetic key holder on...CooooooooooooooooL!"

 

And yes, along with this...NO travel bugs on micro.geocaching.com. TB's belong in real caches as well.

 

And, since the majority of muggles stick to their urban surroundings, we'd have our trails free of muggled caches, and stolen TB's.

 

Sorry for the rant, but I did try to bring it back to your original topic.

 

-TT-

Edited by TrimblesTrek
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Please don't replace your cache with a micro or nano. There are some many beautiful and promising greenspaces that are essentially ruined by micros. By ruined what I mean is that a cache like yours would be far more enjoyable to find in a park than a micro in a tree with another micro in a tree at the minimum allowable distance away followed by yet another when just a little creativity in the cam and concealment of something capable of holding more than a slip of paper would make the park and the hides far more fun to visit for cachers.

 

Micros also make it hard for cachers like myself that currently lack personal transportation to drop off travel bugs and coins due to nearby locations reachable on foot being saturated with micros and nanos. They have their place mind you and some are quite inventive and well worth the effort which makes for a memorable hunt but most are just dim memories and numbers for me. Even after weekend long event where it's a 24 hour race to find the most caches hidden specifically for the event and the smallest cache allowed had a volume of one litre (thus no micros and nanos), I can still recall each and every cache we found, even generic lock and locks, but the micros found just two days ago are all but forgotten.

 

Sorry for the rant, but this subject seems to come up a lot in my area and we were discussing it at length the past two days.

 

The advice I can best give, without seeing your location, is to place another similar sized cache in the same area but far enough away from the previous location and have the coordinates updated. Also, perhaps try some new or better camouflage for it.

 

Hopefully that helps and I really hope this one experience doesn't prevent you from placing others.

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I'm not directly opposed to micros - they can often be used in areas of historical or other interest to great effect. The other rants against micros are forgetting that a micro can be a decent cache, as long as you've answered the question "why have you brought me here" well.

 

I do, however dislike a micro in a location that can properly support a 'proper' sized geocache. A 300 meter hike into a large wooded area should not lead to a nano on a spruce tree. That was funny the first 20 times .... now I tend to skip a micro in the woods.

 

If you can replace your cache with a regular sized cache, with trade items than I would strongly encourage you to do so. The kids love swag when you take them geocaching. The adults like a place to put travel bugs. If this is the first time the cache has been muggled, I wouldn't lose too much sleep over it - stuff like this happens. I've had to perform maintenance on well hidden caches 800 metres in from the parking area, in a place I thought nobody would ever go while my urban caches are sitting undisturbed. Counter-intuitive but stuff happens.

 

Now, if the cache goes missing a second time (in a short period) then consider moving the hide to a less travelled location.

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I'm not directly opposed to micros - they can often be used in areas of historical or other interest to great effect. The other rants against micros are forgetting that a micro can be a decent cache, as long as you've answered the question "why have you brought me here" well.

 

I do, however dislike a micro in a location that can properly support a 'proper' sized geocache. A 300 meter hike into a large wooded area should not lead to a nano on a spruce tree. That was funny the first 20 times .... now I tend to skip a micro in the woods.

 

If you can replace your cache with a regular sized cache, with trade items than I would strongly encourage you to do so. The kids love swag when you take them geocaching. The adults like a place to put travel bugs. If this is the first time the cache has been muggled, I wouldn't lose too much sleep over it - stuff like this happens. I've had to perform maintenance on well hidden caches 800 metres in from the parking area, in a place I thought nobody would ever go while my urban caches are sitting undisturbed. Counter-intuitive but stuff happens.

 

Now, if the cache goes missing a second time (in a short period) then consider moving the hide to a less travelled location.

 

I'm waiting for TT to tell us how he really feels. :anicute:

 

Funny, I had this cache that was muggled about 2 years ago. So I replaced with one of the cheapest containers imaginable; a 2 for $1 Tupperware knock-off. I figured if they knew where it was, I would try this as an option, and see what would happen. I was just there last night on a maintenance visit!! And discovered that I'd better be replacing that thing. :laughing:

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