Tracking is fascinating.
A son's story. At dawn in steep alpine, he lay prone and shot a mature blacktail buck in the chest with a 180 Swift A-frame in 30-06 (his elk load at the time). The buck was standing about level with him, in a rocky groove with legs and bottom edge of chest behind a steep windrow of rock. Without a rangefinder, he estimated 250 yards. The buck whirled as if touched but gave no other sign of a hit.
No blood, no hair and after 1 1/2 hour of careful searching, and he is one of the best trackers I know, he gave it up as a miss and went on hunting. Nearly half a mile farther along the mountain, he noticed one small drop of blood on a narrow rock trail that skirted the base of a cliff. He worked it, found another speck, and by afternoon had worked the buck's trail to the top of the open ridge above. The other side was was wide open rock ribs, little cliffs, scree and steep alpine slide meadows down into a mean timber and boulder basin. No more blood.
He looked over the country and asked himself where he would go if he was a wounded deer looking for cover. 250 yards below and across was a wind gnarled Christmas tree, the only cover within several hundred yards, so he went down to it. He found blood where the deer had stood for a bit but no trail to follow. He looked around, went to the next most likely spot, found more blood and I think it was the third such move when he saw the buck stand up ahead of him in a small clump and he finished it.
Post postmortem showed a flattened, smashed, rough surfaced bullet that had obviously hit a rock and ricocheted into the buck. He had underestimated the range and bounced the bullet off of the rocks just in front of the buck's chest, changing a quick kill into an odd wound the buck might have survived.
