On those few occasions where I have had to cache near roads; I have done what others recommend; taking a compass bearing and paced distance from a marked, roadside tree or rock. In addition, I have buried the cache, usually an odor-proof bag in one or more 1 gallon paint cans together with jugs of water, fairly deep, covered it with a 6" layer of soil and then buried a paper sack of garbage-y looking stuff on top of the cached supplies and soil.

The idea here is that anyone digging where you have buried your stuff will encounter a limp paper bag filled with dish-washered eggshells, coffee grounds and wet paper towels, wonder who would take the trouble to bury their garbage, and then go away. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />

The same theory applies to wildlife. On one occasion, I had a coyote dig down to the garbage, taste a bit of eggshell and then give up. If you worry about the odor of eggshells and coffee grounds attracting bears then use biodegradable stuff of no interest to them such as crumpled old newspapers, hunks of sheet rock trimmings, loose sawdust, cigarette butts and the like. If it looks like garbage most folks and/or critters will go no further.

The garbage bag routine is certainly no substitute for hiding your cache effectively but is a way of diverting the Bozo's that might possibly find it anyway.

The guy who taught me this trick would put a dead cat in a hole near where he buried his cache and let the "cat-hole" be fairly conspicuous. The signs of burial or the odor was intended to divert the curious or hungry from the better-concealed cache. To me this is a bit over-the-top but might be worth considering as an alternative if you have a supply of dead cats.

It also helps to have left a good digging stick somewhere near the cache when you placed it; digging bare handed is tough on the fingernails, especially in rocky soil. No need to ask me how I learned this!