The original question is kind of a yes/no question. I would like to think that most people probably would say "some of the time". Clearly, no one will ever fire a shot if they don't "put one in". So, what happens with a yes/no question is that people respond to how they tend to run things most of the time.
I run "cold" as I have indicated, and that happens 98-99% of the time. If I'm lying in wait for geese to fly over, then there's one in, safety on. (If anyone gets up to walk around, actions are opened.) If the gun is on my back - which is where is is most of the time- it's cold. If I'm wandering through bear thickets I'll most likely have the rifle in my hands and there'll be one in the pipe - safety on. (But I won't second guess what others do in this regard, and I'd be very uncomfortable if there were any others carrying hot if I was in the lead.) If I feel there is a high need to carry hot, I prefer to carry a weapon that can be carried uncocked safely- like an exposed hammer gun. I think this is one reason for the popularity of the Marlin Guide Guns in Alaska.
But I survived my youth and it wasn't necessarily because I deserved to. And I have managed to live through enough experiences to realize that the rules of safe gun handling are not without merit, nor should they be cherry-picked. And while the rule of muzzle control and pointing the weapon has been frequently cited in these many pages without refute, many folks seem willing to overlook another one of the basic safety rules about keeping the chamber empty until you are ready to take the shot. (This has nothing to do with how one might carry a weapon when hunting, or being hunted by, humans; I'm not really sure why that was brought in except, perhaps, for lack of more logical straws to grasp.)
The bottom line for which there can be no argument is that a cold chambered weapon is a safer condition in terms of having an accidental discharge than is "sometimes hot". Whether that may make one miss a shot opportunity or not may be open to argument. However, it is probably also without question that in most cases an instantaneous opportunity taken is going to be one where other accepted rules of safety being violated.
Sometimes, the air you 'let in'matters less than the air you 'let out'.
