Mr. Dixson,
Since the main gear is close to the cockpit, one gets a feel for where it is after awhile
You are as usual....quite correct...even on aircraft where the pilot and landing gear are quite a way away from one another....as in the Chinook.
In time, most pilots are able to "feel" where the landing gear and cargo hook are....although some never do but then I would suggest they are not "pilots".
Funny as it seems....I always felt the cargo hook was about eighteen inches behind my seat.....and could put it into the up held doughnut of an underslung load. Most of us got to the point we could put the aft gear down on a rice paddy dike without a lot of coaching from the crew.
One has to do far more than mere "currency" flying to achieve that kind of "feel" for the aircraft.