All of that makes sense, but I wouldn't count on a deer ever doing the "right thing".
I've had a bit of experience in this area because people in my neck of the woods always want to hunt with heavier than normal bullet weights (because of the bears), so they'll stoke their old 30.06 with 180 or 200 grain bullets which often won't reliably expand on deer.
At any rate, I've spent a number of afternoons looking for other peoples deer. The one constant (in my experience) is that they do bed down and usually closer than you'd think. It's extremely important to actually look for blood, tie it to a particular track and attempt to follow it foot by foot directly to the deer. A bedded deer can be completely invisible from just a few yards away. Blundering off in the general direction you think he took will just obscure the track and lose the deer.
I *"think"* that wounded deer just head for a known cover in the general vicinity and whether that is uphill or downhill is immaterial to them - they just want to hide.
As an aside, let me pass along an anecdote about how well deer can hide. 3 or 4 years ago I was hunting with two friends in a remote locale in late december. We were hunting out of a forest service cabin that had been heavily hunted all season and we weren't doing very well, so decided to climb up a mountain to hunt some big bowls which we figured hadn't been heavily hit. We got up above the snow line into a "relatively" flat area criss-crossed with ravines filled with deep snow.
We were following a trail with me third in line and I noticed a dark "spot" lying in the snow no more than 6 feet from the trail. It was a doe, curled in a ball, ears down, looking for all the world like a rock or small log in amongst the grass and brush sticking out of the snow.
Well, having an opportunity to play "Mighty Hunter" and show my friends up, I called them back (being careful to not look at the deer and spook her), and chided them about not being very observant. I then took a snowball and whacked the deer almost at our feet - and all hell broke loose because their were at least 8 deer within 5 or 10 yards of us on both sides of the trail, which broke and ran in every direction!
The difficult part was trying to pretend that I knew they were all there! I wish I had a picture to show how naked this area was. A few leafless alders, some tufts of grass and rocks - everything else was just naked snow. You wouldn't think a deer was within a mile of that place.
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Keith
The Bears and Bear Maulings Page:
members.xoom.com/keithrogan