I thought about this more, he probably thought it was GPS capable, and just had no clue what effect he might have. This explains why my tag was also missing there, when I went back to set the control Saturday. Good thing he didn't move it until after the race finished, that would have been chaos!
It's a shame he doesn't spend more effort removing the illegal dumping along the road than removing streamers from permitted park users.
We had an illegal hunter tear up all the streamers from a conservation area where we had a permit. "They shouldn't be doing this in MY woods." Sigh.