About ten years ago I was refereeing for a paintball club, and one weekend we decided to play in a woodsie area near Sultan, WA. About midday another ref commented that she hadn't seen one of the players in over an hour; we asked around, and the buddy he carpooled with said the missing guy still had his gear in the car, so he didn't know what was up... he did say that the guy was diabetic, so maybe he'd passed out somewhere on the woodsball field?

An older player piped up and said it was a possiblity, and went on to say he was an EMT & that he'd like to help if he could. One of the other refs organized everybody into a search party & had them put their gus away, and I recommended that we keep our masks on in case the guy woke up & started shooting people. We formed a long line, combed & recombed the field for a while, then someone yelled that the missing guy was back at the cars.

It turns out the guy had gotten lost. We had the borders of the field clearly taped off and the road was visible from the field, yet he still went in the wrong direction. When he realized he was lost he did exactly the wrong thing: he paniced, dropped all of his equipment, and ran. By sheer chance he came across another road and hitched a ride back to the paintball fields, and did nothing but mope around in his friend's car for the rest of the day.

This taught me that you still need to keep yourself oriented even though you're not in the woods to hike; even if you're just berrypicking a few yards away from a road, it's a good idea to take a compass reading first.