I have played about a dozen starts with several pilgrim and the rest voyager ... have gone to locations for ammo, clothes and one food site but no caches ... is the GOG version nuked ... I haven't seen anything in release notes to indicated they've been removed?

Playing the Mystery lake map.

There are some there, but I think they spawn randomly. I have found two out of probably more than 70 restarts. Both times were around mystery lake. Just luck to stumble onto one I would guess.

Thanks,

I have watched 4 or 5 videos claiming locations are fixed, that all occur each game and showing how to reach same but I have come to believe although they might have been such at one time ... they appear to be random and chances are near zero .... almost the the same for my ever finding a rifle.

One time I spawned at trappers with a rifle but could not find a knife or hatchet so no sustainable food and ultimate death at Voyager level. Guess gonna play Pilgrim for quite awhile.

Luck

Well, I do think the spawns are in the same places each time, but whether that site you happen to look at is the one that spawned this time is randomized. The rifles will always spawn in the same locations, each time the location will be different. So just avoid the wolves and check each location until you find one. Good luck!!

The possible locations are fixed, but out of the 8 or 9 spawns in Mystery Lake, only one random cache will appear per game along with 1/9 in Pleasant Valley.

As long as these where added to the game they've been semi-random. The locations are fixed but only one location will spawn on start. So it is entirely possible that you've visited multiple preppers cache locations without seeing one.
I believe every map has around 8 possible locations of which only one will be active on each new game. The location that will be used is entirely random.