People have tested their assumptions about hiding caches (stashes) and have discovered that they could not find what they hid. I am referring to two men who hid a cache of (basicaly junk) and just to determine if they could find it again a year later. GUESS WHAT? They could not find it; and the reason why is very simple. They didn’t measure the depth that they buried their original container.

They knew the vacant lot. They knew the basic area where they made their junk burial. They brought their shovel (to dig with). They wrote notes (like how many steps from a tree to where they made their burial; but it never occured to them to measure (even in ball-park terms, like "elbow deep", the depth. Then, another factor is winter freeze that shifts depth of many items in the ground, but that was not a factor in this particular story. They just didn’t write down that it was about 18 inches deep, and a year later when they dug to 12 inches, they couldn’t find it.

I am experienced in what I say. There are literally many thousands of lost treasure stories that were never refound by the original hiders. If I had to guess, I would guess that the original robber (or whomever) also brought a bottle of whiskey with them (to increase their enjoyment, while clouding their thinking). They didn’t keep track of every detail needed to recover what they buried, and over time their mind blurred their intentiona and goal, and many of these are still in the ground somewhere.

If you are going to bury a stash, you must be precise and keep a record of what you know. Were you digging in clay, were you digging in dirt? If the dirt was moist, why? Were you in a flood zone, or in what is called a swale (a tiny small depthed hollow in the ground that would never be noticable in dry weather, that is a place where rain water runs off along the ground? What are the landmarks that you picked? How did you measure your distances from the landmarks? Did I mention how deep you buried the item or its container? Did I mention what the soil conditions were (a fact you should also record in your notes), If you buried an air-tight container, will wet water and soil "lift it" over the course of a year (probably). Will winter frost heave lift it? Probably. If you buried it in sand and if what you buried was heavy, will lots of wet weather cause the depth of your stash to sink further? Probably. If you are cetain you are digging at the right spot, you can dig a foot deeper, "just in case". But I have used metal detectors on areas where I thought for certain that I knew the precise location of what the metal detector told me, and I couldn’t find a thing. What if the real thing looked for was only 6-inches away from the hole you dug (and it was your 15th hole) , what are you going to do? If you actually inform yourself of everything and anything imaginable about what you buried, the odds are with you that you can recover it, and especially once you go back to your pre-written facts and swear off your assumptions andmemoreis about the originaol hiding of your stuff. Whatever you do, do not assume that anything short of dozens of detials will suffice and including (time of year of burial, ground moisture conditons, ground soil conditions, depth at which you originally buried your item. Did you over-fill your hole so as to expect a year later to find a small mound? Or did you underfill your hole so as to expect a tiny hollow in the ground? You need to micromanage your details to find in a timely way what you8 stashed (and definitelky you need to not rely on friends or partners, unless their micromanged record is the same as your micromanaged record.–and should it vary wildly, then go back the next day and add more data to your record (if you can even find it again).