Sadly it sounds like one of my tricks. I remember hiding one a few years ago. At that time it must have been pretty good, because I Do remember thinking, incase I forget, I'll find it if I ever move.
I've looked for it now off and on 2 yrs.
I don't have kids at home, so that's not a issue.
I've seen it happen.
I've also seen them get misplaced and end up in ridiculous places.
One particular incident that I later realized was MY fault involved a Sterling .22 pistol that went missing from my father's house when unloading the vehicle after a camping trip.
We spent about 2 years looking for it, and never came up with anything. No spare magazines. No holster. No pistol.
It was all just
gone.
And then, one day, my step mother cleaned out the pantry while chasing some mouse droppings.
In the back of the pantry; behind 250 lbs of wheat; on the tile floor; covered in crusty, black, previously-liquefied potato residue; was a Sterling .22 pistol in its holster; sitting next to a spare magazine; all wrapped up in what was left of a mesh potato sack; with petrified potato "eyes" interlaced through everything.
Sack of potatoes....
20+ years later, while telling my wife about that camping trip and the 3+ hour detour to a flour mill that caused a great deal of irritation in my father, I had a flashback of the unloading process. I was getting scolded for not carrying enough 'cargo' per trip into the house, while simultaneously being scolded for not getting all of the 'gun stuff' first. I grabbed the holstered Sterling and spare magazine off the front seat, dropped it into a sack of potatoes already in my other hand, grabbed two cased rifles, and took it all into the house.
The sack of potatoes got left on the kitchen counter, and the rifles went to the gun cleaning area. Back in the kitchen, I couldn't find the potatoes to extract the Sterling, so I kept unloading. Somewhere in all of the yelling and anger of the day, I simply forgot about the Sterling.
Apparently, the sack of potatoes had been put in the pantry by my step mother; and it wasn't noticed when the 250 lbs of wheat was put away later that week.
Don't yell at your family. They may hide your guns from you, without even realizing they're doing it.