> Several of the LBNA pioneers are male. Possibly a majority, I'm not
> sure of the actual count.

In the early days in the US, there were men and women involved. Yes,
there were prolly more men (but I would guess each gender was over 40%,
depending on _when_), but given the sample size, its meaningless. (The
first post Smithsonian letterbox was placed by a woman, and the first
hand made stamp was also made by a woman, therefore in the "early" days,
depending on your definition of "early", it was female dominated. So
you can draw the line whereever you want with such a small sample size).

And since geocaching arrived 2 years afterwards, the men and women had no
choice to let any putative gender preferences play out ...

> Well that was a generalization - but in the early days of anything
> it was male dominated. I believe that letterboxing used to require
> the use and knowledge of a compass - and that alot of boxes had
> cryptic clues - all things males are (not bashing here) are
> intrigued by.

It didn't _require_ any of these things. However, the early people were
influenced by Dartmoor tradition, which does have those things. I would
thus assert that the prevalence of those things in those days was the
Dartmoor influence, not any gender bias (tho implementation of "cryptic"
was quite different, and compass use is different, and it makes little
sense to use Dartmoor notations when we were boxing the entire
country -- there was a certain "spirit" that some early people tried to
capture as best they could). Of course, some people _did_ use GPS in
those days, (before SA was turned off -- Dave Ulmer "invented" what
later came to be called geocaching within a few days of SA being turned
off).

Later, but still early, straightforward directions emerged and began
to dominate. I would chalk this up to low barrier to entry and lack
of developed American tradition. This was also the time of the emergence
of the store bought stamp, again, a symptom of low barrier to entry
(contrary to an assertion made in a another post, most stamps in the early
days, including New England, _were_ hand carved (I have the logbook to
prove it), again, it depends what you mean by "early"). Some people
eschewed the straightforward directions, but for the most part, the
percentage of straightforward directions is much higher now than in
the "early days".

Later still, when geocaching.com came on line -- those who were in it for
the place, ease of entry to the hobby, not into stamp art, and the high
tech web site with all the logging and other features, went there. (Moreover,
Jeremy Irish put alot of energy into promoting geocaching.com thru various
media (CNN, The New York Times, and so forth), thus people were brought on
that way. Most people really didn't want to promote LbNA). Those that
were in it for the stamp and vestiges of Dartmoor tradition and secrecy
and stuff stayed or came to letterboxing. I would also say that this is
when we see the commercial stamp start to make its exit, to once again be
replaced with the hand-carved (in New England) (those that would simply
buy a commercial stamp just to get in the game perhaps figured it was
easier to grab a pile of stuff instead) . I think that explains some of
the current biases, as opposed to gender (of course, perhaps gender
indicates _those_ biases, but I would perhaps argue that since both games
are basically internet games (much to some peoples' chagrin), and
geocaching.com has more features, it has more appeal to _internet_ users.
That is perhaps the dividing characteristic. I assure you that there are
many more _non-internet_ letterboxers than geocachers, men and women alike.

Well, just my perspective -- no need for anyone to get inflamed, there is
no intent in that direction.

Cheers