Count me in on a lost deer. Back in 2013, I shot a doe one late afternoon with my 30-06 at about 30-50 yards off to the left of my tree stand if my memory serves me correctly distance wise.
She did not go down right away and ran off and across what would be directly in front of my stand at about 60-70 yards away. When I finally climbed down, I thought I would find her lying dead within not too far a distance because of finding blood where I made the shot and also being able to follow the blood trail to where I lost sight of her. When I was not able to find her easily, I called a buddy to come help me look. Sadly, after several hours in the dark and clear sign from how the blood spotted the leaves the trail went cold and we simply lost her, and I felt sick. But knowing that the weather was cold enough that night, I thought I might get lucky if I looked at daybreak the next morning. Unfortunately, despite finding the same end of the blood trail we found at night and picking up further sign now that I could see better in the daylight, I could not find the deer after many hours again that next day. I even trespassed and looked on the neighboring field to see if she might have gone across the fence line to their place, and no luck finding blood over there. Sad to say, I still see her blood trail of spots on leaves, then a splatter of blood like where she paused and some blood gushed out as she stopped or when she started up again to leave only more spots on the leaves again till I lost her.
I am still trying to devise a plan to avoid this from happening a 2nd time. With morning hunts leaving lots of daylight to find shot deer, they minimize chances for losing one. But as we know, late afternoon hunting also brings the deer out. This leaves my conundrum. Afternoon chances vs potentially lost deer. I hunt with bow, Muzzle and firearms and welcome any advice on minimizing a lost deer due to darkness etc.