Inside, he found a baggy of what appeared to be pencil erasers and a small scroll listing previous pill bottle finders -- a list the 20-year-old Marine added his name to.
Bennett had just successfully geocached, the process of locating a container of items or a secret answer often hidden away from plain sight and detected through the use of coordinates, clues, inventiveness and, at times, persistence.
"I get frustrated to the point where I get mad and determined, and I don't give up," Bennett said Thursday on the emotions of not finding a so-called cache. He once searched for two whole days without success.
While Bennett's tree climb and pill bottle snatch didn't draw the ire of any onlookers, other actions by Lowcountry geocachers in the past year have, including trespassing in private graveyards.
Following complaints from local residents and cemetery owners, Rep. Catherine Ceips, R-Beaufort, introduced legislation last month to criminalize the act of geocaching in South Carolina cemeteries, archaeological sites and historic properties, providing penalties of up to 30 days in prison, a $100 fine or up to 100 hours of community service.
"I just don't think you can play a game in a cemetery, that you can treasure hunt in a cemetery," said Ceips on Thursday, a day after a House committee hearing on the bill. "I've got (pictures of) people with little stuffed animals next to the veterans' graves -- that's not how you honor a U.S. veteran."
And so the state is left trying to regulate the elaborate and often bizarre world of geocaching, where players communicate over the Internet -- the creators of a cache posting clues and coordinates, and finders posting messages on their level of difficulty.
It's a world where the players have handles and refer to outsiders as "muggles," referencing the lingo from J.K. Rowling's fantasy book "Harry Potter," for non-wizards.
The caches they seek range from ammo boxes full of trinkets to facts off historic plaques that are relayed back to cache creators for confirmation and credit of a find.
In Beaufort County, it's thriving, with caches to be found on The Bluff overlooking the Beaufort River, Pigeon Point Park, Old Sheldon Church, a buoy in Port Royal and on Hunting Island State Park.
This week, following Ceips' proposed legislation, details were removed from www.geocaching.com for a 23-cache circuit around area graveyards called "The Stones of Beaufort."
Created by Beaufort computer specialist Dean Williams, or "Head Llama" according to his online geocaching profile, the challenge was for geocachers to find 35 mm film canisters, or so-called micro-caches, that were placed near or in old cemeteries, many of which are part of old plantations.
"The main point is to get people out in the countryside and see areas they wouldn't see," said Williams, adding that no canisters were near or on headstones and many were placed in the hollows of trees or posts. "Most of these plantations are long gone, and all we have left is a name and a cemetery."
Champions of geocaching say it is a fun and healthy activity that introduces people to new sites and history, a growing family pastime that is civic-minded and arranges events like the international Cache In Trash Out day on April 16 to clean up littered sites.
Critics say oversight is needed because of insensitive caches in other parts of the state that have prompted pictures of geocachers lying beside tombstones at night with cache contents, the creation of caches at memorials for accident victims, and callous phrases such as calling cemeteries "boneyards."
Two cemetery cache circuits near Columbia are called "Oh, What a Beautiful Mourning" and "Kick the Bucket," according to Ceips.
"The things that we saw were appalling. There's no other words for it," said Jonathan Leader, the state archaeologist for South Carolina. "Without this law being passed, I have very little hope in people policing themselves."
But one Lowcountry geocacher says today's laws are adequate enough.
The law "is redundant and unnecessarily stigmatizes geocaching," said Beaufort technician and geocacher Chuck Williams, known as "Waterbaron" and of no relation to Dean Williams. "There are laws already on the books for littering, and there are laws on the books for trespassing.
"I'm not going to deny some people clearly made some mistakes ... and we need to clean the messes up," he said. "I'm not saying all geocachers have common sense."
Chuck Williams said he wished Ceips and other officials would have contacted him and other geocachers before looking to regulate the activity through legislation.
Ceips said that Leader and others tried to contact Seattle-based www.geocaching.com more than a year ago but received no response.
"You go to a phone book and find a 'Head Llama,' and I'd be happy to contact them," she said.
Both sides have expressed interest in reaching an amicable solution for an activity that they say has its merits if done responsibly and respectfully. Chuck Williams even attended the House committee hearing Wednesday.
"They don't like unknown strangers visiting the grounds of their relatives, and I understand that and respect that," Dean Williams said. "All they had to say was cease and desist, and that would have been the end of it."