In the past, I have had issues with ammo cans. To the best of my knowledge, no one has messed with my newer ones. But then again, who would want a preform.

I have often wondered if there are people out there that create an account so that they can steal from us.

Happened to me a while ago. The “perp” took the ammo can and left everything else in a black plastic bag.

I’ve seen lots of ammo cans for sale at garage sales, flee markets, etc. There is definately a market for these. My guess is the thiefs figure it’s an easy score for $10 (give or take) for each one they steal.

I’ve never had one disappear, but then again they’ve all been puzzle finals or multi’s in remote locations that see very few visitors. I also publish all my caches as Premium only now which seems to help keep them in place a little better (i.e. another barrier to the “cheap” thief”).

Anyone ever attempt inscribing a small little symbol on them to see if they show up a local garage sale? I’m thinking a full name they would easily block out some how, but possibly just a well placed dent or some long scratch mark in a specific spot to make it recognizable to cachers in your normal group?

When on ‘the Lonely trail’, we are no longer surprised to find the remains of numerous ammo can ‘nests’ that have been torn apart and raided. At this point, we’ve come to appreciate the token gesture of the ‘thoughtful thieves’, that bag up and leave the contents behind. The sad thing is that some of these are ‘legacy’ caches in beautiful spots, that no longer have an active CO or ‘trailman’ to rebuild them.

Very sorry to see your caches being hit, bartrod. Creepy, for sure. You might want to consider swapping out any remaining cans with Lock ‘n Locks, or the like……steal them yourself. Perhaps leave one as bait under the watchful eye of a motion-activated video camera, and post the video on YouTube…….

I am also seeing an increase in cache thefts, and some of them would take looking at GC.com to find. Really a sorry situation, and probably related to the issues you mention, increased resale value of ammo cans. The other big factor is that anybody with a smart phone can sign on now. That is why all my caches for now on are going to be premium member only.

On a second related note, I noticed several of Bobcam’s micros on sign posts have gone missing in the Prescott area. These are valueless 5mm tubes, and the assumption has to be that someone really does not like micros on sign posts and is making some kind of statement or vigilante action on mircos along the road.

z

We have been having this conversation also. With many caches in the Wisc. Dells we get a lot of first time and casual cachers. While we are happy to see people engaged in an activity that doesn’t involve tourist traps, we also get a lot of maintenance issues. We were replacing one of our caches one day and a young man came running up loudly saying “did you find it”. When we informed him we owned the cache he was very excited to meet us and proudly showed us the phone app that got him to the cache. We explained we were having to replace it because someone had taken the cache and stealth was needed when caching. Don’t think it registered. We are also thinking that our caches need to be premium to stop the casual vacationer from causing us maintenance problems.

We are also thinking it is time for the sport to go back underground a bit and be a little more off the radar. While we have done a class at the library we don’t feel it did any thing other than give desperate parents something to occupy their preteenagers for an evening.

We have lost ammo cans in DNR land and are sure people are restocking their storage needs at our expense. In every case we have replaced the ammo can with a worthless peanut butter jar and have had no more trouble.