TxCowboy, you bring up a very interesting point.
This whole subject is a tough one for me. Too many different scenarios!
Take bogobbles situation...make a hit you are not 100% sure of at last light, the sensible thing to do is wait until the next morning to trail it. In his case the coyotes already found it! He did nothing wrong, but wound up with little or no table fair.
To me...that would still be a recovery.

Finding a poorly hit deer 2 or 3 days after the hit, because the crows directed you to the kill site, this is different to me.
IMHO, you did not recover this one.

Now, TxCowboy brings up a valid point....if you find one after the meat is ruined, do you feel NO obligation to tag it?
You could get a heck of a battle over that question!

I have, on other subjects overtly accused people of harboring thoughts they would not come right out and say! So I think it is only fair for me to spit out what I am thinking now.

The Zaft buck was not a legitimate recovery! It should NOT be accepted by P&Y. Zaft admitted he forced a marginal shot. And, he did not find the buck, someone else did!

There, now I feel better.<img src=icon_smile_evil.gif border=0 align=middle>

I will go out on a limb about this....If you hit a doe, and did not recover until the meat was ruined, I would not expect you to use your tag. But, lets say you hit a big buck(here comes the trophy hunter part of me)and did not find it until the meat was ruined....If you are gonna take the rack...TAG IT!

NRA,UBP,BASS Member
New Stanton,PA