My second plane was a clipped wing cub and I was terrified when I took off the first time.I only had 20 flights under my belt and deadsticked as the engine died as I was climbing to altittude at 75'.The club instructor heard me and knowing it was my maiden flight and I'm still new ran towards me to help me and slipped and almost took me out and knocked down the barrier right as I touched down about half way down the runway.I did nose over and bust a prop but all was ok and we laughed because the instructor said,"here I am trying to help you and I inadvertantly almost shoot you down on landing deadstick runnin to help ya!".Anyway I went right back up and have flown fine since I think I almost had myself psyched out as it does take more concentration but but not that much at least for me anyway.I picked up a pts mustang for plane 3 this weekend as its a "trainer" but still havent had a chance to get out yet.

B.I.E. you hit the nail on the head. It's not the gear as much as the plane. One of the problems first time draggers run in to is throttle application. Most trainers being trikes and "reasonably" powered, tend to teach newguys that it is fine to go full throttle, bump the rudder/nose wheel a little, then quickly take off. Bad things happen where the ground meets sky.
You mentioned J3's which got me to thinking(an unreasonably slow and cumbersome process). My Cub is the old Sig 72" wing, I fly it with an older OS 28 in the nose and usually take off at about 2/3 throttle. Also the guy who taught me to fly, taught me to slowly advance the throttle instead of firewalling it. The small motor and the slow throttle advance gives me a very rewarding scale like takeoff.
Now, we take our garden variety taildragger, add our understandable penchant for overpowering everything(because we can and it's fun), and then throw in the newbe notion that the faster I hit the power the quicker the plane gets in the air and away from the plane eating Earth and we have the recipe for ankle biting ground loops.
The other thing I got to thinking about is that with the exception of trainers I would bet that 75 to 80% of the planes at our local flying fields are tail draggers. Meaning? Eventually, most everyone firures it out.

My first low wing taildragger was a John Van'T Haaf "Gnat", a 34 inch wingspan pattern plane designed for a .10 engine. The plan was a centerfold freebie in Model Airplane news, I don't think it was ever kitted. The 1/2A "Bee Tween" I built earlier doesn't count because it was a two channel hand launched plane.

Low wing
Tail dragger
and small!

Yet I didn't crash it on my maiden flight and had a lot of fun with it.