Just wanted to thank everyone for the responses. Yesterday was my first day on this site/forum (what an intro). Trust me, its not much easier learning from the mistakes of another when you are their to witness it all unravel. When he and I spoke at the truck, he was over confident of his shot because of the looks of the arrow. He said he had not attempted any blood trailing but had seen the 2 drops at the shot site. Where we hunt in GA, that night the temperature was not going below 70 degrees, so his response to me was questioning spoilage of the meat if we did not recover the animal that night. The immediate area is relatively small and thick with open fields around it, so when we searched in the a.m. we covered pretty much every possible peice of ground we could. An incident such as this will not damper my opinion of archery hunting but it was a sad education. I hunted with a rifle all my life and killed a lot of deer, however my first bow kill was with my xbow last year and it was a feeling of accomplishment like no other. Thanks again for all the responses and good luck this year. When in doubt.....Let em walk. Doug