As someone who played jungle just to learn how hard it actually is, I wanted to point out a few jungle gap situations that are actually your junglers fault.

• Clear: If your jungler can’t 5 to 6 camp before 3:15-3:20 during their first clear, they shouldn’t be playing ranked. Any meta jungler can accomplish this or faster. If you can’t do this go into practice tool and clear until you can be at scuttle spawn with 6 camps down no leash by 3:30.
• Jungle Pathing: Your laners are relying on you to be where you are supposed to be at certain time stamps. It doesn’t make sense for you to give up farm to afk in a bush for a gank. If you can’t engage an enemy within 10 - 15 seconds of rotating toward them you are ruining your jungle path.
• Dragon: First dragon spawns at 5 minutes. If you started blue side you are already clearing toward it on your second clear. If you started red side you are finishing krug / raptors and ready to rotate to it when it spawns. Unless you are playing a tiamat rushing jungler like ww, trundle, etc, you should have a pink and be ready to gank mid or bot to open prio to do it between 5 - 6 minutes. If you are ganking top side and the enemy jungle takes dragon no contest, that was on you.
• Rift Herald: First rift herald spawns at 8 minutes. Your support should attempt to rotate to it on spawn if they have bot prio. If they are a roaming support there isn’t’ really an excuse for them to not be there. Same as dragon you will be clearing wolves / gromp on blue start 3rd clear or finishing raptors moving toward wolves when it spawns. You should’ve bought your second pink ward after your second clear back and be ready to gain prio or contest it.
• Ganking: You have a window where you can look for a gank without trolling your cs per minute. This window is about 15 to 45 seconds after you finish a clear. Meaning that if we kill scuttle crab at 3:35-3:50 we should be backing to base by 3:50-4:35. Ganking isn’t about blindly running into a lane non stop and gambling a lead. If you go top and fight a Darius with flash ghost and he gets a double buff 300 gold lead, you just threw top lane till 14. It’s the same for bot and mid. You should be ganking lanes where you have kill potential or they at least can’t fight you. Don’t waste your resets on lanes you have no kill potential in.
• Chasing: Most junglers are boosted animals who dive so they can 50/50 your lane. This is by far one of the most tilting things people do in low elo. If you are ganking and they flash and you no longer 100% kill them and survive just leave. You can go back in and try again in that 45 second window you are in or come back after a reset while stronger. Flash is a 300 second or 5 minute cooldown. You can full clear and attempt to gank them 3 separate times before its back up. If you die greeding for a kill while chasing instead of being patient, it’s your fault.
• Strong side vs Weak side: This one is fairly easy to explain and hard to master. If your team has more cooldowns, summoner spells, vision, and numbers, you are on the strong side of the map. If the enemy team has these things, you are on the weak side of the map. DO NOT PLAY ON THE WEAK SIDE OF THE MAP. Your entire job as the jungler is to throw off the balance and alter strong side vs weak side. You know when an enemy support roams top with mid and jungle and they demolish you guys 4v3 and take rift? That is playing on the strong side of the map. So if you are starting your clear and see this popping off you should danger ping and look for value. If you die in a smite battle giving up an objective and baiting your team to their death on the weak side of the map it is your fault.
• Mirroring: You have probably heard of this term quite a few times before. It means you are impacting the opposite side of the map as the enemy jungle. You do this whenever you can’t 1v1 or invade them. They start your blue or red side you clear and take theirs. They are ganking top while dragon is up you take dragon then gank bot. Same situation for rift herald. If you are constantly dying 1 versus 1 to the enemy jungle because you refuse to mirror it is your fault. "I understand if you are getting camped by lanes and the enemy jungle sometimes you just gotta ward and take the L on some camps and play safe.
• Wave Management: You just watched your top laner die and you rotated there a little too late but finished off the flash / ignite no tp enemy top and got a kill. DO NOT IMMEDIATELY LEAVE THE WAVE AS IS. If the wave is slow pushing toward your top laner let it. If it is frozen or nearly frozen toward the enemies tower you are obligated to shove that wave so it crashes and bounces back. The worst thing you can do is pit your losing top lane against a freeze under the enemies tower. You just got gold and exp sure but they just lost a duel. So how do you expect them to break a freeze on their own a level down and possibly an item down? Shove that wave. And if you are uncertain and they have no tp just tax that shit anyways and take a plate. Denying the enemy while getting gold on yourself will put you up 500 to 1000 gold over the enemy team. If you leave a bad wave state as is and your top then dies trying to fix it, it is your fault.
• Macro: Just because you locked in the wow simulator role you thought you could just ignore wave management and closing out a game? Nah nah scrub. You will win so many more games playing jungle by capitalizing macro mistakes the enemy team makes. Let’s say you are mirroring and take the enemy blue side late game. You were looking to kill an overextended adc farming a side lane and you got the kill. But your team decides to lose a 4v4 in the baron pit on the weak side of the map without you… YOU SHOULD NOT IMMEDIATELY RUN TOWARD A LOSING FIGHT. If you have no chance besides blindly flashing over baron wall and attempting to smite it you are better off praying you have an Ezrael or Draven with ult up. Instead shove bot and take a tower or catch waves. If you kill the waves and get shove back toward the enemy you are effectively wasting time on their baron buff. But if you run toward the baron and die trying to be the main character while waves are shoving toward your base and you lose while staring at a grey screen, it is your fault.
• Flanking: There is a time and place for running full sprint at someone like the waterboy through a lane. That time is when they don’t have warded bushes and are over committing to a fight where they can be slowed or CC’d and you just need to say hi instead of surprising them. ALL other instances you are better off flanking an enemy to gank them. Whenever you go to gank a lane you need to think about how you can remove the most amount of exits for the opponent. This means going behind the wall through river to gank mid near their tower. Going around tri or coming up river top “also ganking from brush here is ideal because top usually only has their 1 ward they always use on river.”. Or going behind red past krugs to gank bot or river / tri blue side. If you run through lane on repeat or directly at someone and give them the chance to escape it is your fault. You should always strive to inconvenience then disrupt a laner.
• Presence: There is generally zero reason for you to give yourself away. Because remember if they can see you they can punish you right? You showing with no kill potential just told the enemy jungle to go ahead and commit to that dive, steal your camps, start an objective, or take a free reset knowing you can’t punish them. If you show on the map and don’t get value it is your fault if the enemy jungle gets value for free.
• Ahead vs Behind: Just like a laner you need to know when you are ahead and behind. Even if you are playing an assassin jungle if you are behind risking every gank by giving buffs or gold you are throwing the game. Learn to play behind and farm so you can finish an item or get a level 11 or 16 ult to impact team fights or the map. DO NOT just run at the enemy team on repeat with no kill potential or threat. If you can’t play from behind and are soft inting it is your fault.
• Tempo: You need to know your champions strengths timewise. If you are playing a tank jungle you are most likely strongest in the middle to late game. If you are playing an assassin jungle you are most likely strongest early to mid game. If you are playing a dive jungle you are strong at all stages of the game lol “Riot I swear if you don’t make divers fall off late again I might scream.” If you are playing an assassin and you get ahead early but don’t try to end because you are roleplaying battousai the manslayer in a ranked game, it is your fault you lose late. And if you are a tank jungler and you throw the early game knowing full and well that you stomp team fights late, it is your fault.

So yeah, you are most likely at least a part of the problem in your games. No one is perfect except maybe Dr.Mundo “never get a new skin my sweet boy (1700ish days)”. But you should at least strive to improve these aspects of your play and accept that you made a mistake when you mess these up. And when your team says gg wp jungle gap, canyon, diff, boom, etc, just nod and say you know what? They are probably right. Because I mean you already lost so getting a verified report is worse than just eating the 4 - 9 a game you are gonna get regardless. Hope this helps struggling junglers and team mates who feel like there is a jungle gap but aren’t quite sure which thing to blame it on. Good luck.