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we have a standing rule in our camp, if you shoot a deer and it runs, you can not go walking for it till someone else arrives. Before we did this we would a deer every couple of years. now, we do not. shooter sits in the tree and directs the searcher to the area he believes the shot was made from, it is surpriseing how manytimes when you find blood, it is quite a ways from where you thought the shot was. BUt once blood is found, a orange or chartreuse surveyors tape is tied up high in a sapling to mark. We then go from blood spot to blood spot till we find a deer. Adding a ribbon when your eyes do not see the next spot keeps you from losing the trail, (easy to do in bad light or weather) Getting down low, on hands and knees and looking from blood spot to blood spot makes it easy to see the path the deer took. If you see the deer, back up slowly, get a round loaded and the rifle up, or an arrow nocked, and re trace slowly looking for signs of life, If the deer is still breathing but does not flinch, move back to wear you still can shoot but giving the animal a chance to die. they seem to go faster if they rest. If you push, they can go for a freaking long time.
As to a shot in brisket and no blood, yup east to do and a bad shot if it does not hit anything important on the way thru, Almost certainly the paunch caught the bullet or maybe a back ham, but the bullet opened up the guts and it will die, slowly, painfully, and not the way you should treat that animal. I saw one run over a mile with only one lung left and a sucking chest wound, my brother finally shot it when it ran past his stand on the far end of the 320 we hunt. From the dry blood on it chest, we figured it had been shot for an hour, maybe more. That deer was dog food. After running that far under stress the meat was so tainted, it was only good for feeding the dogs.
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