Drive by caching?

[Team Venom]

I had a series of posts on my caches that said,
“Logged from my phone using the Geocache Navigator by Trimble”

I have 1 of my caches in plain view and never saw the person “physically” get out and log the cache. Just drive by it, and turn around in the driveway. I don’t know about you all, but to me that just takes the challenge out of caching.
I mean, you could then load all the caches within a route, and just drive by them, and claim found?

Thoughts….

[gotta run]

@Team Venom wrote:

I mean, you could then load all the caches within a route, and just drive by them, and claim found?

Thoughts….

Sure. You can even save yourself the trouble and just armchair log them.

I know some people do and, except on challenging caches where I think a cheap find is a particular disservice to those who have actually found it, I don’t care a whole lot. After all, if they care that little about caching in the first place, it’s highly likely they will not take good care of a cache when they actually find it (rehiding, rebagging, etc.). I guess if it became an epidemic on a particular cache I might start deleting logs.

The best part is that when you log using the Trimble app, you don’t even have to type so much as a period to get GC to accept your log because the Trimble boilerplate is there. No need to go through all the trouble to type “TFTC.”

“Lazy cachers of the world…” ah, they’re too lazy to finish that thought.

On the Left Side of the Road...

[furfool]

Delete their log. I suspect that there is a lot of shenanigans going on. I have seen more than a few caches in the last couple of months where a cacher logged a find and never signed the log. I also have to question group caching where the group finds 75-100 caches in 6-8 hours in an area they never cached in before, or anywhere for that fact. Looking at the conservative side of 75 caches in 8 hours, that comes out to one find every 6.4 minutes. It’s impossible. They would have to split up and sign each other’s names. It’s one thing when they’re all together at the cache, but going out in different directions and signing everybody when everybody isn’t there, just isn’t right.

[cheezehead]

My opnion is, if they don’t sign the log book,it’s not a find. Almost like a DNF You might be at GZ, but if there is no log or cache, how do how do you claim it as a find. Unless you claim the one in the back fourty .:wink:

[-cheeto-]

Find cache. Open Cache. Sign Log. Maybe trade something. Return everything as it was or better. Sounds pretty simple and fun. 🙂

[gotta run]

@-cheeto- wrote:

Sounds pretty simple and fun. 🙂

Too darn hard for some. I say leave ’em alone. How much fun can the game be played like that? They’ll be gone soon enough. Hopefully they don’t place any sooper dooper caches while they’re here.

On the Left Side of the Road...

[Team Deejay]

Actually, as a cache owner, you are, more or less, required to delete their logs. The guidelines require that cache owners maintain their caches, including checking logs to make sure the online entries are not bogus. Now, we all know that nobody is going to check up on you to make sure you are actually performing this duty, but, that said, it is still a duty. I certainly understand that you don’t want to aggravate these “driveby cachers” who might take action against one of your caches (or you!), but that is part of the price of being a cache owner.

Reviewer Note: As reviewers, we are occasionally asked to check this on virtuals, where it is obvious that armchair logging is going on. That is a different situation. As far as I know, in Wisconsin, we have only had to issue a couple warnings, and no caches were ever archived (by us, anyway). There were a handful of virtuals in Milwaukee that the owner shut down after discovering that more than half of the new logs coming in were bogus. (Maybe if he hadn’t added “You don’t have to email me the answer” to the description, he would have had fewer issues?)

[Team Deejay]

Oops, duplicate post.

[AuntieNae]

Just pointing out .. it means they were logging their finds as they were going along .. not necessarily as they were driving by.

As I reply to emails on my cell phone, it does put a message saying something about sent from my blackberry via such and such provider .. their phone might be doing the very same thing.

I am not familiar with that software program as my cell provider does not support it .. but I suspect that is what it means.

[labrat_wr]

I’m not sure about all the Trimble Geocache Navigator apps but the one I have on my Blackberry Pearl allows me to “log as found/not found” but it does not actually LOG the find on GC, it puts it into the “Field Notes” section on my profile and then I need to actually post the log from the PC.

It does default the “Logged from my phone using the Geocache Navigator by Trimble” text, but that can be deleted and the full log entered.
I find it a total disservice to a cache owner to just log with that text and no personal entry.

Disclaimer : Always answering to a higher power.

[gotta run]

@Team Deejay wrote:

Actually, as a cache owner, you are, more or less, required to delete their logs. The guidelines require that cache owners maintain their caches, including checking logs to make sure the online entries are not bogus.

Yes but from a practical standpoint there is no way to do this. Who’s to say that a team can’t find 100 or more caches a day? We are a family “team” and we have multiple GPS units. Sometimes I am caching in one place and other family members in another. “gotta run” gets all the credit. Is that wrong? Ecorangers and others come to mind here too. With the Team Venom example, how can you be sure that the person turning around in the driveway wasn’t someone who had taken a wrong turn and was going back?

My point being, unless you get something blatantly obvious, you have no way of policing this unless you go to each of your caches and compare the physical log to the online log.

And even then, it’s not going to match up if Marc found the cache.

It’s incredibly ironic that policing bogus logs is an owner duty, but creating an additional logging requirement–which is generally a pretty good guarantee that someone found the actual cache–is prohibited.

On the Left Side of the Road...

[bugsmasher69]

When I check the physical logs of my caches to the online logs I find pretty regular were people have signed the paper log but never logged it online. Only one time I didnt find a name on the paper log but was logged online and I gave them the benenfit of the dought on that one.

[cheezehead]

I do know a few cachers who like to hunt for caches, once in awhile they will sign the log book and once in a great whilelog it on GC.com. That’s the way the want to play the game. And there’s the few muggles who find the cache, have no clue what they have found and sign the log book.
I have one particular cache that was signed by a team of DNR & County Foresters who found the cache with out the aid of GPS. It was one of my first hides.

[hogrod]

I don’t sign every logbook In the caches I find, especially those tiny micros that take 10 minutes just to get the log back into. I figure I am saving the cache owner a trip to replace the log.
Most logbooks get replaced because they get wet or are full so the online log is the only one that really matters.

If some of you want to police the logs and compare online to logbook I wouldn’t change my logging habits at all. I obviously don’t play for numbers & would have no reason to fake my 50-200 finds a year.

On the caches I have owned I get 4x the number of logs in the paper book as online. should I delete these from the book since they didn’t log them online? 😉

[Mister Greenthumb]

@cheezehead wrote:

I do know a few cachers who like to hunt for caches, once in awhile they will sign the log book and once in a great whilelog it on GC.com. That’s the way the want to play the game. And there’s the few muggles who find the cache, have no clue what they have found and sign the log book.
I have one particular cache that was signed by a team of DNR & County Foresters who found the cache with out the aid of GPS. It was one of my first hides.

We found a cache at a soccer field in Jefferson that had just been found minutes before by a girls soccer team. They saw the previous cacher find the cache and were curious. They went over and found it after he had left. The whole team signed the log and then went back to their game.

With over 100 caches placed I have replaced many of our log books and I would say on average they have about 10% more signatures than what are logged on the cache page. We know several geocachers who find caches regularly and do not log them.

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