Unfortunately I've gut shot two deer...fortunately, I found both. Rob made great points in his post. Whatever you do, be patient!!! Don't push them or they will go for hundreds of yards. Left alone for 6 hours or so, they will lay up within a few hundred yards and die. Both deer left good sign initially but then it faded to dime-sized drops after 75-100 yards. One was pushed by buddies who thought themselves master trackers and who wanted to push the deer to it's demise...eventually we ran out of sign on that deer but luckily upon doing a grid type search we found it several hundred yards away. I will NEVER push a gut shot deer again. The second I waited for about 5 hours and found it about 300 yards away. You're right, it's not a fun topic to talk about and nobody I know is ever proud of a gut shot but it does happen and we must know how to deal with it if we are ever involved in the tracking of a gut shot deer.