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atleast over here we hunters face great scrutiny from animalactivists and so on so we have to be very ethical about it all. tracking animals involved in traffic accidents fall on some of us hunters.
But I stand by my first statement: I wouldn't take another shot at an animal before I knew the first one was down, and I put some real effort into tracking it, if it was a hit that will kill eventually it is my obligation to put that animal down.
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You've let the animal rights ethics corrupt your thinking too. We ARE very "ethical" about it when we make the effort to make a good shot and a reasonable effort to recover the wounded animal.
Being shot does not, by a wide margin, guarantee death to the animal. That sounds like another fantasy created the animal rights nut jobs. I've seen quite a few animals with obvious old wounds (as in years old) that were getting along just fine.
Who says that it's unethical if the animal is never recovered? Animals die every day, no human involvement needed. They rot and/or get eaten by other animals. Same thing happens to one that's shot and never recovered. How is unethical because it's life was shortened by a human but not if it was shorten by disease?
Is the implication that it's ethical to kill the animal if you eat it but not ethical if you don't? Why does that not apply to mice? Woodchucks (Groundhogs)? Etc?
See, you're letting the anti-hunters define the parameters. They weasel their way in until you start to think like them.
It's either ethical to kill animals or it's not. If it is, human involvement extends to making a reasonable shot and reasonable effort to recover the animal. Even calling that a "moral" obligation is a stretch. As I said, if it's a moral obligation, why doesn't it extend to other relatively higher-order mammals such as mice?
It's not a tragedy if an animal is not recovered. It sucks, it's a bummer, it ruins your day, yeah, whatever, but it's not a moral issue.