Happens more often than you think. I spent 4 years stationed at the Coast Guard station in Port A. I bet in my 4 years I had over a dozen people come in and try to file reports with us for missing shotguns during duck season.
One in particular sticks out in my mind. I had two guys come in freaking out around 8 am on a Sunday. They had left their jon boat tied up to a blind down by dead man's hole by the JFK overnight in order to keep other people from hunting it Sunday morning........ They had left all their gear in it. 2 super black Eagle 2's as well as blind bags and decoys. Came back the next morning and it was gone. Boat and all. Go figure. Most of the other ones were just bad luck, these guys were idiots.

That's fantastic. Kudos for being a good sportsman.

Somewhere around 1990 my parents bought my now ex brother in law a Weatherby 20 gauge O/U for Christmas. In mid September the next year he was hunting dove at a day hunt place near Eastland and he propped his gun up against a barbed wire fence to go help a buddy look for a down bird. Somehow he got distracted and they walked back to their cars and went home. He was unloading his car in Dallas when he realized he didn't have his gun. The panic set in. He didn't know how he was going to tell my parents and he didn't have a spare $1000.00 to replace it.
Somehow he talked me into going back with him and we set out about 4:00 AM. We got to the place and explained to the owner what had happened and he let us go look for it. It took a while but BiL got his bearings by a tree and we walked to and then down a fence and there it was right where he left it but covered in dew. We dried it off then went back to the owner's house, got my gun and paid for another day to hunt.