The secret of our West KY Caving was landowner relations. It is much easier to find a new undocumented unexplored unsurveyed cave by the land owner telling you where an opening is, however small, than it is to physically check every sink, disappearing stream and similar karst feature on the topo map. You need land owner permission in any case, although I will say we did not initially always have that. We used age old techniques. Start in an area with karst and take it from there. Stop at feed stores, rural post offices. See an old man sitting in his yard, stop and introduce you self. Once you have some experience in the area and can name some names-can show them some copies of your work, drop the name of a university geology prof, etc., explain the hole you are searching for may not be any bigger than a raccoon hole maybe, just maybe, the leads will start coming in. It helps if you have a several county area that other cave surveyors and cave documenters have not recorded. I would say for every 10 leads one would be a "go." This takes time.
Someone has to do the leg work and build up an relationship with the landowners. Best of caving, Preston in Muhlenberg Co., KY
