One of the required Webelos activities under the new program is to go Geocaching...and Geocaching is specifically noted. Yuck... Granted, I have a few years to worry about this since my oldest is only a Tiger, but I think our den will be seeing if we can get away with planting a hybrid to get through this particular requirement!

I think that BSA is too tied to geocaching.com. Even as a geocacher and scouter myself, I think that they should have made it the "geolocation games" merit badge. That way they could have included all of the geocaching websites, letterboxing, munzees, Pokémon GO and anything else that comes along without changing the name. The requirement could have been to find and log two types of these things and explain what is involved in the others.

Given that, go ahead and make a hybrid. Some reviewers require that you provide exact coordinates to the letterbox. Reviewers in Utah (and other places) allow them to be treated like actual letterboxes; you provide coordinates to the starting location then the seeker follows directions from there. You still need to provide the coordinates of the actual box (for distance checks between caches) but they can be hidden from all but the reviewers.

It would be nice if all reviewers allowed directions, but some interpret their guidelines differently. Ask local geocachers who have hidden hybrids what they suggest. They will have experience with those reviewers and know the allowed boundaries.

Your den won't have to create/hide a geocache for the Webelos Camper requirement. Just go and find one. But the Boy Scout merit badge for geocaching requires the scout to "plan a geohunt for a youth group" and "set up a course with at least four waypoints".

I've often thought about trying to get them to add a letterboxing merit badge. I agree with prior post - would have been nice if the badge had encompassed all geolocation forms! There can certainly be a tie in with map and compass for letterboxing - as well as hiking.

Your den won't have to create/hide a geocache for the Webelos Camper requirement. Just go and find one. But the Boy Scout merit badge for geocaching requires the scout to "plan a geohunt for a youth group" and "set up a course with at least four waypoints".

I understand this. In my area, Geocachers have a bad reputation of messing with letterboxes and playing pranks on letterboxers as well. I would prefer to plant a hybrid as a way to get as little into geocaching as humanly possible when it comes time to tackle this requirement with my den.

Is it required to exclusively use the geocaching.com website or can any geocaching listing service be used? There are (non-commercial) alternatives! OpenCaching North America (www.opencaching.us; "OCNA") is one such alternative. It's a completely free service with no restrictions on access. The service is run by a small group of volunteers and they are considerably flexible in what is allowed when compared to geocaching.com. I'm pretty certain they will allow an all-clue-based Letterboxing Hybrid cache as long as there are coordinates for a starting location.
Anyone can view the site and listings and can download the caches without creating an account. That may be good if you want to make the information available to others who otherwise won't bother using the website.
The flip side is that most geocachers can't be bothered using more that the one site, so there are far fewer users on the alternative sites. In a couple years, my 65+ OCNA hides have netted less than 10 finds in total.
FWIW, OCNA is part of the larger "OpenCaching" network of sites; there are similar sites for Australia, UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, France, Netherlands.... OCNA allows cache types that are "grandfathered" on geocaching.com - Virtual, Webcam, and Moving caches. they also have unique cache types such as Guestbook caches, MP3 caches, BIT caches and (coming soon) Benchmarks