I hate to say it, but it's your friend's own fault. Heshould have stayed and finished the job he started instead of going to work and calling you nearly SIX HOURS LATER! Say the guy showed up at 7AM and found the deer. There wasn't anybody around to wave over to the deer. He might have trailed it all the way back to the tree and still not found anybody. Who could be expected to hang around all day before you got the call to go look for it?

Could be the guy who took it really was a walking slimeball who stole the deer. Could just as easily be he was a dedicated hunter who didn't want to see a shot and abandoned deer go to waste. You reckon maybe the guy was cussing the SOB who shot the deer and was too lazy to recover it the whole time he was loading it up?

Best way to try and prevent stuff like this happening is to either blow off a morning of work and find the deer before leaving, or just don't go hunting if you can't miss work and don't have time to take care of what you shoot.