Good advice Ksuie.

One other thing you could have tried is make large circles around your stand or the last place to recall seeing the deer. Keep expanding these circles. With your buddy there, this process wouldn't take too long. By doing this, you can assure that you've covered just about every possible inch the deer could have gone. From your description of the arrow, I think the deer expired but you never know.

Not recovering a deer does NOT make you a bad hunter. What makes you a bad hunter is not learning from such an experience, repeating these mistakes over and over, being unethical, etc.

I hit a deer the openning day of shotgun a few years ago and never found it. I thought the hit was good as there was some blood at the point of impact. I found a light blood trail and followed it for nearly half a mile when it petered out. Searched and searched for more sign and did find one more spot. While continuing along the most likely path, I came across a valley and saw several other hunters on the hillside watching me. None of them were in hunter orange (not required but 99.9% of us wear it) and they were right on the edge of where our land ends along the road. They looked like mercenaries! I got a real bad feeling about them and decided that my life was worth a little more than a deers at that point. I went back and checked out where I shot the deer again. After carefully looking at the point of impact and my shot angle, I felt that the hit might have been low on the chest and not in a fatal area. The blood did not seem to indicate that any vitals were hit.

It happens to all of us sooner or later.

-Mike