shellbadger Travel Bug Activity
New text, tables and figures are being added to this page in January 2021.
I started caching over the Thanksgiving holiday in Houston in 2009. My son’s children were so rowdy he decided to get them out of the house for some exercise. I went along for some exercise of my own. He gave his phone to the kids and we took off. I had no idea what we were doing or where we were going, but he explained along the way. We had a good enough time that I followed up when I returned home to Lubbock. I obtained my own membership the following month and started hunting caches. I found my first travel bug in about my 15th cache. It had come all the way from California to Texas! After I learned more about travel bugs (TBs), I was committed to them.
I have transitioned away from mainstream caching. I will never find 1000 caches, never fill a difficulty/terrain matrix nor will I ever find caches for 30 days in a row. Instead, I'm far more interested in making, releasing and monitoring trackables. I still search for caches in which to leave trackables, but I mostly restrict my searches to small to large containers with good security and maintenance histories. I frequently revisit caches that have quickly moved my bugs in the past. Rather than do a county challenge, I spend most of my travel miles maintaining my larger caches in condition to take travel bugs.
It was never my intention to make and release as many bugs as I have. My first goal was to keep releasing bugs until all the US states and Washington DC were visited. That was finished around 2014. However, I got the US protectorates of Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and Guam in the bargain, but still lack American Samoa and The Northern Marianas. It looks like I will never get all the provinces and territories of Canada (still need the territory of Nunavut). The countries of Europe, including San Marino, Lichtenstein, Andorra and Monaco were all visited by the end of 2018. All the continents but Antarctica (there is a cache there). In concert with this expanding universe, I had periods of recovery following surgeries that I filled with making bugs. As a consequence, I always have several hundred unactivated TBs in the starting gate.
I started caching over the Thanksgiving holiday in Houston in 2009. My son’s children were so rowdy he decided to get them out of the house for some exercise. I went along for some exercise of my own. He gave his phone to the kids and we took off. I had no idea what we were doing or where we were going, but he explained along the way. We had a good enough time that I followed up when I returned home to Lubbock. I obtained my own membership the following month and started hunting caches. I found my first travel bug in about my 15th cache. It had come all the way from California to Texas! After I learned more about travel bugs (TBs), I was committed to them.
I have transitioned away from mainstream caching. I will never find 1000 caches, never fill a difficulty/terrain matrix nor will I ever find caches for 30 days in a row. Instead, I'm far more interested in making, releasing and monitoring trackables. I still search for caches in which to leave trackables, but I mostly restrict my searches to small to large containers with good security and maintenance histories. I frequently revisit caches that have quickly moved my bugs in the past. Rather than do a county challenge, I spend most of my travel miles maintaining my larger caches in condition to take travel bugs.
It was never my intention to make and release as many bugs as I have. My first goal was to keep releasing bugs until all the US states and Washington DC were visited. That was finished around 2014. However, I got the US protectorates of Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and Guam in the bargain, but still lack American Samoa and The Northern Marianas. It looks like I will never get all the provinces and territories of Canada (still need the territory of Nunavut). The countries of Europe, including San Marino, Lichtenstein, Andorra and Monaco were all visited by the end of 2018. All the continents but Antarctica (there is a cache there). In concert with this expanding universe, I had periods of recovery following surgeries that I filled with making bugs. As a consequence, I always have several hundred unactivated TBs in the starting gate.
When I began releasing travel bugs in January of 2010, I would jam them in any cache container large enough to hold one, no matter the circumstances. I began keeping records on the TBs almost immediately, but before any trend was noted, I received a disquieting email from a cacher in Germany. He/she had noted I was the most recent visitor to a cache in New Mexico. Because I had dropped a TB there, the cacher wondered if I had noted the daughter’s travel bug. I had seen travel bugs, but not the one he/she described. I don’t know if that person believed I didn’t have the bug and felt somehow irresponsible because I hadn’t recorded the numbers of the TBs present. I was indignant that someone would steal a travel bug...was I ever naïve!
Within a year, I learned that bugs don’t move as quickly as I thought they would and was dismayed that many of them had already been marked missing. At first I assumed I was doing something wrong and took steps to try to improve their survival. I became more selective about where I dropped bugs—I started checking visitation, maintenance and inventory logs prospective caches. If there was a payoff from that level of planning, it wasn’t obvious to me at the time.
Then, I decided to place my own scrupulously-maintained caches as departure points for my TBs. I bought, camo-painted and placed 15 ammo cans. All but one were in fence lines at rural locations. Six of the cans disappeared almost immediately, and in other instances the caches were just raided for their contents. This left me wondering about the kind of people I was dealing with. In 2012 a conversation with a garage door installer gave me a clue. He had no dedicated GPS device, only the free app on his phone. He never looked for “the little bitty caches,” just the bigger ones to “see what was there.” I took the last part to mean he would take what he thought was the good stuff. And, he acknowledged he never signed the logs.
That insight prompted me to move and convert my ammo-can caches to Premium Member Only. The number of visitations to the caches went down, but so did vandalism and theft of travel bugs. However, all of the remaining ammo cans were eventually stolen over the next three years, presumably by premium members who could locate them. Interestingly, a few of the TBs in the stolen containers went back into circulation after being anonymously dropped elsewhere
Within a year, I learned that bugs don’t move as quickly as I thought they would and was dismayed that many of them had already been marked missing. At first I assumed I was doing something wrong and took steps to try to improve their survival. I became more selective about where I dropped bugs—I started checking visitation, maintenance and inventory logs prospective caches. If there was a payoff from that level of planning, it wasn’t obvious to me at the time.
Then, I decided to place my own scrupulously-maintained caches as departure points for my TBs. I bought, camo-painted and placed 15 ammo cans. All but one were in fence lines at rural locations. Six of the cans disappeared almost immediately, and in other instances the caches were just raided for their contents. This left me wondering about the kind of people I was dealing with. In 2012 a conversation with a garage door installer gave me a clue. He had no dedicated GPS device, only the free app on his phone. He never looked for “the little bitty caches,” just the bigger ones to “see what was there.” I took the last part to mean he would take what he thought was the good stuff. And, he acknowledged he never signed the logs.
That insight prompted me to move and convert my ammo-can caches to Premium Member Only. The number of visitations to the caches went down, but so did vandalism and theft of travel bugs. However, all of the remaining ammo cans were eventually stolen over the next three years, presumably by premium members who could locate them. Interestingly, a few of the TBs in the stolen containers went back into circulation after being anonymously dropped elsewhere
I once placed a poker chip TB in a non-premium cache near Canyon, TX (on I-27, 90 miles north). The next day I received a note that the poker chip was gone and only the tag was present in the cache. The cacher wanted to know what to do with the tag. Several later similar separations of a tag from the companion item induced me to make some changes in travel bug construction. Among these, I started gluing the link in the TB chain (no “accidental” separation of bug and tag) and I began putting all the bugs into plastic bags (to keep them clean and to reduce wear on the number). The bag step later evolved into heat-sealing the bugs into 4-mil plastic wraps.
Starting in 2014, I began yet another strategy to hopefully aid in TB longevity. I discarded the chain altogether and began to make travel bugs from items to which I could closely attach the tag by either pop-rivets or super-glued bolts and nuts. I reasoned that the cutters that would defeat the original chain would do likewise to the cable-attachment recommended by others. A thief will steal, but we should always take steps to keep the honest people honest, so said my grandfather.
There have been many iterations of the mission statement for my travel bugs. Believing cachers actually read them, I initially wrote thoughtful goal and travel requests specific to each bug. Once I realized the requests were usually ignored, I changed the mission statement to something more practical. By that point I had the suspicion that events and urban, non-premium caches were high-risk circumstances for TBs. Caches near travel destinations, like state and national parks also account for many losses. Destination caches, like Mingo, are likewise problematical. So, the mission statement became largely a plea to avoid these hazards and take care of the bug. The current mission statement follows:
This trackable has the goal to circulate more than five years and to be moved by at least 25 cachers. That is a rate of five drops per year for five years, or a drop every 73 days. No permission is needed to leave the U.S. While in the U.S., please drop it in a Premium Member only OR a rural cache near a busy trail or road. Do not place it in an urban cache or abandon it at a caching event where there is no security. Transport the bug in the original plastic bag for as long as the bag lasts; the bag keeps the trackable clean, protects the number and prevents tangling with other items. Otherwise, take the trackable anywhere you wish.
Starting in 2014, I began yet another strategy to hopefully aid in TB longevity. I discarded the chain altogether and began to make travel bugs from items to which I could closely attach the tag by either pop-rivets or super-glued bolts and nuts. I reasoned that the cutters that would defeat the original chain would do likewise to the cable-attachment recommended by others. A thief will steal, but we should always take steps to keep the honest people honest, so said my grandfather.
There have been many iterations of the mission statement for my travel bugs. Believing cachers actually read them, I initially wrote thoughtful goal and travel requests specific to each bug. Once I realized the requests were usually ignored, I changed the mission statement to something more practical. By that point I had the suspicion that events and urban, non-premium caches were high-risk circumstances for TBs. Caches near travel destinations, like state and national parks also account for many losses. Destination caches, like Mingo, are likewise problematical. So, the mission statement became largely a plea to avoid these hazards and take care of the bug. The current mission statement follows:
This trackable has the goal to circulate more than five years and to be moved by at least 25 cachers. That is a rate of five drops per year for five years, or a drop every 73 days. No permission is needed to leave the U.S. While in the U.S., please drop it in a Premium Member only OR a rural cache near a busy trail or road. Do not place it in an urban cache or abandon it at a caching event where there is no security. Transport the bug in the original plastic bag for as long as the bag lasts; the bag keeps the trackable clean, protects the number and prevents tangling with other items. Otherwise, take the trackable anywhere you wish.
To get a sense of whether anything I have done has made a measurable difference, I compared the activity of TBs released in different years. There were 3,293 trackables followed in this part of the report. The activity of bugs released in 2010 (n = 240) were tracked from that year through 2011 to the end of 2012. The same procedure (release year, plus the next two) was followed for TBs released in 2011 (n = 350), 2012 (385), 2013 (349), 2014 (396), 2015 (447) and 2016 (396). 2107 (328), 2018 (401). Each cohort consisted of bugs circulating for 2-3 years after release, depending on whether their respective releases were early or late in the index year.
Some definitions must be given. The release date is not the same as the activation date; activation of a TB sometimes occurs months before the actual release, the average interval is 60-70 days. The release is the act of placing of a bug into a cache by me or my agent and abandoning it. I also treat handing a new trackable to another cacher as a drop. In both cases it when the fate of the TB is completely given over to someone else. For the purpose of later tabulating of results, this is event or time 0 (zero).
Drop 1 occurs when a TB is retrieved from the cache into which it was released by me or my agent, and placed in a cache at another location, or handed off to someone else. For every new drop, a new set of risks are encountered, some cache-related, some TB-related and others cacher-related. In the expression of TB success, I frequently use the terms drops and cacher counts interchangeably. Although I know it is not always the case, I assume every new drop is done by a new cacher. I myself have moved a few of my bugs after many months of inactivity.
A travel bug is marked missing if: (1) a cache log reports it absent; (2) a cacher sends me a message or email to the effect the bug is missing; (3) a notice is received that a cache containing my bug has been archived; and (4) after a year on the inventory of a cache, no discoveries have been logged, and the cache has been visited on six separate dates within that year.
I do not value bugs by miles traveled, although I understand why other persons do...races and all that. Total time between the first and last has some merit, but those numbers are unduly influenced by periods of inactivity in remote, rarely-visited caches, or at the bottom of a cachers kit bag. Nevertheless, I will do an analysis of that variable at a later time. Rather, I believe longevity is best expressed by the number of drops a TB has achieved; or put yet another way, by the number of cachers who have advanced a bug in its mission to travel from one container to another. The real risk encountered by a given travel bug is not time itself, but rather the changes in circumstances over time...different risks are introduced with the state of the next cache and the behavior of the next cacher.
Some definitions must be given. The release date is not the same as the activation date; activation of a TB sometimes occurs months before the actual release, the average interval is 60-70 days. The release is the act of placing of a bug into a cache by me or my agent and abandoning it. I also treat handing a new trackable to another cacher as a drop. In both cases it when the fate of the TB is completely given over to someone else. For the purpose of later tabulating of results, this is event or time 0 (zero).
Drop 1 occurs when a TB is retrieved from the cache into which it was released by me or my agent, and placed in a cache at another location, or handed off to someone else. For every new drop, a new set of risks are encountered, some cache-related, some TB-related and others cacher-related. In the expression of TB success, I frequently use the terms drops and cacher counts interchangeably. Although I know it is not always the case, I assume every new drop is done by a new cacher. I myself have moved a few of my bugs after many months of inactivity.
A travel bug is marked missing if: (1) a cache log reports it absent; (2) a cacher sends me a message or email to the effect the bug is missing; (3) a notice is received that a cache containing my bug has been archived; and (4) after a year on the inventory of a cache, no discoveries have been logged, and the cache has been visited on six separate dates within that year.
I do not value bugs by miles traveled, although I understand why other persons do...races and all that. Total time between the first and last has some merit, but those numbers are unduly influenced by periods of inactivity in remote, rarely-visited caches, or at the bottom of a cachers kit bag. Nevertheless, I will do an analysis of that variable at a later time. Rather, I believe longevity is best expressed by the number of drops a TB has achieved; or put yet another way, by the number of cachers who have advanced a bug in its mission to travel from one container to another. The real risk encountered by a given travel bug is not time itself, but rather the changes in circumstances over time...different risks are introduced with the state of the next cache and the behavior of the next cacher.
The general release locations for my travel bugs at the end of 2020 (n = 4,232) are displayed in the table above. It shows that nearly 90% of the TBs were released in what I consider my core caching area. The approximately 11% of the TBs released outside the core area were dropped during my own travels in the USA, Canada, France, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands. Also among this number are small collections of TBs exchanged with correspondents in England, Belgium and the Netherlands.
My core caching area is the region of Texas is depicted above. The dots in the figure are the locations of my caches from which travel bugs have been dispersed (bison tube caches are not mapped). The black dots are for currently active caches, the red dots are for archived caches. The shape of the area is ovoid and measures approximately 105 miles SW to NE and by 80 miles SE to NW. The western portion is on the plateau regionally known as the Llano Estacado. Irrigated agriculture, mostly for cotton, is the principle land-use. The caches to the east are off the plateau, where land is most prominently used for livestock. I also have caches east and west of this core area, but they are all small, low maintenance bison tubes and all, save two, are in cemeteries.
The larger caches are located and named to entice cachers to visit. All of the containers are large enough to hold several trackables and all but one of them are park and grabs at the roadsides of major paved roads. The names of these caches also include general location descriptors. For example, for cache 83 Paducah S (Cottle Co., p 35 DeL), the cache is on US Hwy 83, south of Paducah, in Cottle County. The county names and the DeLorme pages were additions around 2013 for the benefit of cachers attempting those challenges.
I usually place two of my own trackables in each container and replenish them on maintenance runs about every 30-90 days, depending on activity and the season. The normal maintenance runs include only caches that have had visitation since the last run. I have had as many as 86 active caches in this area, but for several years now the count has hovered around 60. This number enables me to visit every cache in the Fall and Spring over two really long days. In between the seasons, if trackables are retrieved from one of my containers, or there is some other issue, I will visit.
The larger caches are located and named to entice cachers to visit. All of the containers are large enough to hold several trackables and all but one of them are park and grabs at the roadsides of major paved roads. The names of these caches also include general location descriptors. For example, for cache 83 Paducah S (Cottle Co., p 35 DeL), the cache is on US Hwy 83, south of Paducah, in Cottle County. The county names and the DeLorme pages were additions around 2013 for the benefit of cachers attempting those challenges.
I usually place two of my own trackables in each container and replenish them on maintenance runs about every 30-90 days, depending on activity and the season. The normal maintenance runs include only caches that have had visitation since the last run. I have had as many as 86 active caches in this area, but for several years now the count has hovered around 60. This number enables me to visit every cache in the Fall and Spring over two really long days. In between the seasons, if trackables are retrieved from one of my containers, or there is some other issue, I will visit.
I maintain records on all my caches and travel bugs on spreadsheets. However, keeping records for the sake of anything other than seeking insight is pointless. That said, time and numbers are needed to give weight to conclusions. So, I started hiding and maintaining more caches and making more travel bugs…both are now just habits that I can’t break. The point being, after 11 years, I have ample sample sizes over enough time to address virtually any question that occurs to me.
I read and sort 10 (winter) to 90 (summer) emailed logs per day about my TB transactions. I save only the drop notices. About once a month I enter the dates of drops of the bugs on spreadsheets. Each series of TBs (Art, Poker Chips, Travel, WWII, etc.) has its own file. The figure above is a screen-shot of the layout for the Signal Flag travel bugs. The E and C columns are respectively the days Elapsed since the previous drop and the Cumulative days since the release of the TB.
I read and sort 10 (winter) to 90 (summer) emailed logs per day about my TB transactions. I save only the drop notices. About once a month I enter the dates of drops of the bugs on spreadsheets. Each series of TBs (Art, Poker Chips, Travel, WWII, etc.) has its own file. The figure above is a screen-shot of the layout for the Signal Flag travel bugs. The E and C columns are respectively the days Elapsed since the previous drop and the Cumulative days since the release of the TB.
In order to generate figures and tables for this and other projects, I sort and save the data I want, then rearrange it. The figure above partially shows the status of a collection of TBs that were taken or sent to Europe and never subsequently returned to the US. This collection will be discussed in more detail elsewhere, but the spreadsheet shows the bugs that accrued 19-23 drops. The H, C and M notations for each TB refers to the status of that TB at the end of the study period; they are either in the Hands of a cacher, in a Cache or have been declared Missing.
The table and graph above show the survivorship with successive drops. The values in the tables are the percentages (rounded to whole numbers) of the total travel bugs remaining after each drop, out to 25 drops. For example, for the year 2010, only 93 percent of the TBs made their first drop, or, 7 percent of the bugs disappeared from the location where they were released. After the second drop for the same year, 81 percent were remaining, 19 percent had gone missing. By drop 25, only 2 percent of the original bugs were still active. The data for the present year are the dark blue line in the graph above. The vertical axis is percent, the horizontal axis is the number of drops. The same treatment was given to data for each of the years through 2020.
The first thing one sees in the graph is that all nine curves are remarkably similar. There are two obvious conclusions: (1) there is a segment of the geocaching population that has little regard for travel bugs and (2) the things I have done to date to hopefully to increase longevity of my travel bugs had no effect.
There is perhaps a third conclusion to be reached by examining the table. In comparing the data between 2010 and 2020, in every instance, the values for the 2016 are lower that the respective values for 2010. For the first drop, it is 93 vs 83, second drop, 81 vs 70. In fact, if one examines the columns, under each drop and ignores a little variation, the trend is to lower percentages surviving with each drop. Furthermore, by examining the right side of the table, it is clear there is a trend toward fewer TBs surviving to 25 drops.
The first thing one sees in the graph is that all nine curves are remarkably similar. There are two obvious conclusions: (1) there is a segment of the geocaching population that has little regard for travel bugs and (2) the things I have done to date to hopefully to increase longevity of my travel bugs had no effect.
There is perhaps a third conclusion to be reached by examining the table. In comparing the data between 2010 and 2020, in every instance, the values for the 2016 are lower that the respective values for 2010. For the first drop, it is 93 vs 83, second drop, 81 vs 70. In fact, if one examines the columns, under each drop and ignores a little variation, the trend is to lower percentages surviving with each drop. Furthermore, by examining the right side of the table, it is clear there is a trend toward fewer TBs surviving to 25 drops.
There is another way to express the trend toward increasing disdain for the purpose of travel bugs. In the table at right (excised and enlarged from the graph and table above), for each every drop column the trend is to smaller percentages over time.
On the same table, I placed a red dot between the drop intervals where a value of 50% (representing the disappearance of half the TBs) would be for each of the years under study. If we note the location, that interval is advancing to the left, toward fewer drops.
In the first year (2010), half of the bugs had disappeared before a seventh drop could be made. In 2011 that point was reached before the sixth drop. The 50% point for bugs released in the years 2014-18 was before drop five. These data seem to predict that half of the bugs already released in later years will not survive to see a fourth drop. In the extreme, one might deduce that by 2025, half of the bugs will not experience a second drop, and there may come a time when when no TBs will be forwarded.
On the same table, I placed a red dot between the drop intervals where a value of 50% (representing the disappearance of half the TBs) would be for each of the years under study. If we note the location, that interval is advancing to the left, toward fewer drops.
In the first year (2010), half of the bugs had disappeared before a seventh drop could be made. In 2011 that point was reached before the sixth drop. The 50% point for bugs released in the years 2014-18 was before drop five. These data seem to predict that half of the bugs already released in later years will not survive to see a fourth drop. In the extreme, one might deduce that by 2025, half of the bugs will not experience a second drop, and there may come a time when when no TBs will be forwarded.
Referring to the table above, the rate of loss between drops averages 9-12 % for each of the first 5 drops, but progressively diminishes with drops thereafter. The reason for the reduced rate of attrition and increasing longevity will be demonstrated in detail in a later report. For now the reader will just have to accept my word that it is uncommon for any travel bug that never leaves the U.S. (where 90% are released) to survive past 20 drops. By contrast, the greatest percentage of bugs that have survived past 15 drops have spent some or all of their time in Europe (where less than 5% were released). On average, at about drops 6 to 10, is when the effects of the movement of surviving bugs across the Atlantic begins to be observed. I think at around 15 to 20 drops is when surviving TBs are about equally distributed between Europe and North America. Something about which I don't have to speculate is that I have three bugs, all in Europe, that have achieved 60 or more drops, and at least one is still active. Cachers in Northern Europe are especially diligent in their handling of trackables. However, Europeans (especially the Germans) have no conscience about "discovering" travel bugs they have never seen...I have four bugs whose tracking numbers were taken from an event in Austin in 2011 to a Mega in Munich. Discoveries were logged for years after the bugs disappeared in very different places
While it will be no surprise to anyone that there are many reasons why bugs simply vanish, illness, loss of interest, theft and vandalism among them, but it was a revelation to me that very high percentage of TBs are held by cachers whose identity is known. The TBs were picked up and logged by cachers, but the cachers shamelessly keep them, continue caching and disregard entreaties to put the TBs back in circulation. That has never been done by a cacher whose profile suggests they are European.
I have produced and uploaded some other reports on my travel bug and geocaching activities. The general titles and links follow.
Contributed Travel Bug Photos here
Cachers Holding Travel Bugs here
Travel Bug Travels here
My Travel Bug Capable Caches here
While it will be no surprise to anyone that there are many reasons why bugs simply vanish, illness, loss of interest, theft and vandalism among them, but it was a revelation to me that very high percentage of TBs are held by cachers whose identity is known. The TBs were picked up and logged by cachers, but the cachers shamelessly keep them, continue caching and disregard entreaties to put the TBs back in circulation. That has never been done by a cacher whose profile suggests they are European.
I have produced and uploaded some other reports on my travel bug and geocaching activities. The general titles and links follow.
Contributed Travel Bug Photos here
Cachers Holding Travel Bugs here
Travel Bug Travels here
My Travel Bug Capable Caches here