A long-time reader sent me the link to the video below. The producer of the video appears to be one of those YouTubers that does films of backcountry exploration. He came across a mineshaft while recording on BLM land in Utah. Taking a peak inside the shaft, he saw what he thought were body bags. He informed law enforcement and the local sheriff's office investigated. The sheriff's office subsequently reported that the bags did not contain bodies, but were a food cache.
At one time stashing stuff in an abandoned mine shaft, as done here, would have been sufficient for a remote cache. But with an increasing community of people that explore old mines and caves on public land, it has become more likely that someone will discover a simple cache like this.
There are also people that specifically hunt for survival caches in order to claim the items as their own. Even if they don't outright take the items, they can turn them in to the local sheriff as lost property and claim it as their own when the true owner fails to claim the property within the statutory time period.
Something else to consider is access. I went out to the BLM land south of town to go shooting this weekend and decided to visit a spot that I like for short range shooting--handguns and .22 rifles--and discovered that the area had been fenced off by a rancher, including fencing across the old road to get to the area (based on the condition of the fence posts and wire, this had apparently been done this spring--maybe within just the last few weeks). They are supposed to leave access open to the public, but the road is so little used and overgrown they probably figured they could get away with it or received permission to just run the fence across it.
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