If you're new to paintball, this one will happen more often than you think. You're in the middle of a hot and heavy game of bunkerball or woodsball when all of a sudden your hopper opens on accident and your paintballs hit the ground.

There are a couple of things you can do; you can either leave your paintballs there. They are water soluble and non-toxic; or you can throw the dirty paintballs away. You should never use a paintball that has hit the ground in your gun because it will have microscopic bits of dirt and debris on it that will cause it to lag inside your paintball gun barrel possibly causing breakage and degraded performance.

Washing your paintballs off is not an option either. If you run water over your paintballs, and it doesn't matter if it is hot or cold water, they have an excellent chance of warping and this will make them either break inside the barrel of your paintball gun pre-shot or they will have diminished ability to travel any distance at all once shot (this is if they don't break which is the most likely scenario). Either way, your day of playing paintball will be effectively over unless you have backup ammo.

Always carry extra paintballs. No matter how careful you are, accidents can happen and it's no fun to finish out a game with no ammo and even less fun to sit out the rest of the games because you didn't bring extras. Having extra ammo around will ensure you get to have a full day of participating your favorite paintball games with your friends, just follow general storage rules for the season and keep them cool and dry and they'll be conditioned and ready to go when you are.