Yep, and you were correct.As I suggested way back in post #4.
I suspect that the OP tried to append those Departments ("Groups") that were of interest, but then deleted the avalanche of sites that also followed along. In trying to replicate what may have happened, I tried to only append one of the Departments, instead of the whole system. It would append the single county, or NCSP Troop, but also appended all of the Viper sites. I could not get Sentinel to only append a Department, without any sites selected or being appended. Sites always were part of the append, whether selected or not.