Check The Listing Before You Hunt

[tyerod]

This is just me ranting about my lazyness(?). I will usually print out a handful of cache logs at work when I am getting the itch for some caching. It may be a day or a few weeks before I actually get out to hunt for the caches. Today for about the fourth or fifth time I spent time ripping my way through thickets and underbrush only to not find a cache I'm looking for. Getting home I check the cache's page to find it has been archived between the time I printed it and when I went hunting for it. I now know better and will always check the caches on the day I'm planning on hunting them. Hopefully this will help keep anyone else from getting burned like this. It was a nice walk in the woods anyway.

[TahoeJoe]

I've done the same thing.

[+jollybgood]

This is just me ranting about my lazyness(?). I will usually print out a handful of cache logs at work when I am getting the itch for some caching. It may be a day or a few weeks before I actually get out to hunt for the caches. Today for about the fourth or fifth time I spent time ripping my way through thickets and underbrush only to not find a cache I'm looking for. Getting home I check the cache's page to find it has been archived between the time I printed it and when I went hunting for it. I now know better and will always check the caches on the day I'm planning on hunting them. Hopefully this will help keep anyone else from getting burned like this. It was a nice walk in the woods anyway.

I'm so glad you posted that -- for it suddenly explains somethign unusual that happened to me recently. I had to disable five or six of my caches recently due to record flood levels which left the caches water logged and destroyed the log books. Muddy access roads made it difficult to get into the areas to do maintenance so I decided to disable the caches and replace them all after cold weather arrived and the ground had frozen.

 

I was left scratching my head when cachers continued to seek out and log the disabled caches several weeks after I had disabled them. A few of the finders flamed me in their logs for not maintaining my caches and the fact that the log books were soaked. Of course this annoyed me since I had clearly red flagged the caches and disabled them.

 

Now it makes sense. I'm assuming the finders must have printed out their reports before I had disabled them. Of course that doesn't explain why they failed to notice the caches were disabled when they logged their reports.

[+smenzel]

Hey jollybgood, curious ... what's the correct procedure for handling the flaming in your logs (when the cachers didn't realize that the caches were disabled)? Do you leave, edit or delete them?

[+Divine]

In the Nordic Countries forum we have pinned threads about modifications made in caches. If someone notices that a cache has been disabled, archived, modified (e.g. the coords have changed) etc, (s)he posts a note in that thread. That way people who are going to hunt in certain area can possibly get the information there before leaving. It's faster than browsing through all the cache pages of certain area.

 

Especially the thread of Finnish caches is frequently updated. I've benefitted many times from that thread,

[+jollybgood]

Hey jollybgood, curious ... what's the correct procedure for handling the flaming in your logs (when the cachers didn't realize that the caches were disabled)? Do you leave, edit or delete them?

I left the logs as is. It didn't bother me enough to delete the logs -- especially since they were clearly disabled.

 

I had originally pegged some of the finders as grade A jerks but it now occurs to me that they were probablly working off of out-dated print outs.

[+Desert_Warrior]

YEP.... not reading the cache page before you go can get you burned. For example....

 

The Lost Aztec Treasure.

 

This cache is a 4.5+, no visits all summer long, just too hot! But it was stolen over a month ago. I am about readu to replace it. But if anyone has looked for it since the weather has cooled, and was working off an old print, they were sorely dissappointed. That is A LOT of hiking for a DNF!

 

Check the page once more before you leave. It might save you 5 hours of work.

[+woodsters]

It happens. Although there is not really a 100% way of avoiding such things, this is one of the reasons the pocket queries come in handy with a pocket pc or pda. It can help eliminate some of this as long as you do a pocket query before heading out.

 

Of course there is always a chance that the cache could be disabled or archived during the time fram of downloading and going after the cache...

[+shunra]

I'm heading out of state today, and don't know exactly in which area I will have how much time. Not having a PDA, I made some 100 printouts of worthwhile possible foci of attention, but put most of them on my watch list, just in case something happens. One cache indeed got disabled, and - fortunately :-) - reenabled.

[boreal jeff & sons]

I've done the same thing.

Me to!

[mortonfox]

I usually check the cache listings the evening before I go and get them. The other thing to watch out for is a correction to the coordinates. Sometimes, I miss that.

[+res2100]

I used to get about atleast 1 no find a month, but haven't had any in the past 3 months, since I started checking the caches online the night before I go out caching. However I still usually print out cache pages weeks and months before hand, just in case and have a binder full of them and usually do a quick glance over compared to what is online. I also check to make sure the coords on the print out still match the web site, however I did get burned with a no find the other week, even though I checked what I thought was everything...It was a 6 part multi and the math on the final part had changed and hence I was off by 100meters in my search and unfortunately had to log a No Find.

 

So yes it's always a good idea to check the cases online before you go out to find them, but you never know, it is easy to miss something in the cache description. But it's all part of the game.

 

Stuff posted in this thread would probably be good hints and tips for new cachers...

[+ShadowAce]

I had the opposite happen by not checking regularly.

 

My kids and I went and spent a good afternoon in a scenic area and found the _only_ cache within like 3/4th of a mile..

 

We get home to log the find and check the map to see that another cache was within 900 feet of where we spent the day. I realized my list of caches was over 3 weeks old and the second cache had been placed the day after I grabbed all the points.

 

Meaning we had to go back to the same location 1 week later

[+Marky]

I get my pocket query for my local area once a day. That way, I only miss things that have changed in the past 24 hours. Also, if I'm having problems finding the cache, I might pull up the cache page on my phone to verify that it is active.

[+Patuxent Pirates]

I do the same thing. I usually search for caches, print them out, and then keep a pile until we go out. I always double check the caches before we go. So far we have not had any problem. We've gone after a few mobile caches as well......