Copying and pasting from earlier:
I own dozens of firearms so I can't keep tabs on every single one all the fucking time. I have three safes and keep almost all of them in the safe at all times. I don't have any children in my house and I've told every person living with me that I have these, they're always loaded even if you think they aren't, trigger discipline, etc or just call me if you don't want to touch one. I make sure to generally keep them all to my own space and my wife owns a few guns as well so she knows how to handle them safely.
I do know what I own of course, and I have a list of all the serials, but I'm doing enough firearm activities (hunting, range shooting, competitions, firearms instruction) that several of my guns are always on the move. I'll leave them in a case or in my range bag sometimes so long as they're secured with a lock or a holster.
It was in my hunting backpack that I had emptied at the close of the season. I left my 10mm semi-auto hunting sidearm in there because I had been taking my .44 revolver sidearm with me in more recent trips, so I thought I had "safed" my hunting pistol. Again, I have three safes (collectables and safe queens, rarely used, often/sometimes used) so the other one could have reasonably been in one of the other safes, since I could reasonably put my hunting sidearm in the rarely or sometimes used slots. I don't generally go handling my hunting guns until it's closer to the season so it wasn't like my everyday carry that I would know was gone since it'd be the equivalent of misplacing my wallet. This is like misplacing a pair of swim trunks since most of the year you're not looking for where you placed them, you only use them for one season and special trips.
Since my hunting backpack was empty and I was going on a long weekend getaway, I threw a couple day's worth of clothes in there and threw on my bag and went away. I didn't even know until next season several months later that it had been in there.
And
Every gun is always loaded until you've verified it's unloaded it yourself. There's zero benefit to leaving the chamber empty.