Good scouts, bad scouters

Bummer! That's my Council and I'm sorry you had that experience.

I like your doubling back trick and will have to incorporate that into my trips.

John

Being a scout doesnt preserve from being an aXXhole.
In Greenland this year, we had 3 maps for Kangerlussuaq – Sisimiut Hike, toward the end we met a scout, helped him to find his way
As he asked us for the last 2 maps of his trip (*) ,and we didnt needed them anymore we said to him, ok heres our 2 maps but they are holiday " souvenirs" now please send them back to us once you are back to Switzerland.
I wrote our adress on one of the maps and 2 months later nada.

This is no scout bashing, i was one 30 years ago maybe that s why i am disappointed.
(*) they were doing some orientation game called "explorer belt" from what we learned from others we met earlier, that is why they didnt had maps for all the zone, they needed to collect the infos, maybe asking passer-by was not an authorized way to collect them :)

Fred, sorry about your experience with that scout- maybe in a couple of years that boy will remember what he should have done and decide to make changes in his life. Sometimes boys grow to men by learning from the bad things they do as much as always doing the right thing. As a boy and a scout I did my fair share of "wrong" things, hopefully I learned from them. I use some of those "wrong" decisions in teaching my scouts what not to do and the consequences for making the wrong choice and how to correct it when you do.
Maybe things will be better next time.