Deer should dead. If all the info is right then he got liver and you guys went too early. What happened to the blood trail...... fat or hide covered the hole. Simple.
I shot a doe this yr and waited 2hrs just to be safe. I thought I either had 1 lung and liver or both lungs. I wasn't completely positive on the hit so thats why we backed out. When we took up the trail we had good blood for about 70yds....... then it became sporadic. It was dark and we only had one flashlight so we decided to back out and come back the next day so we didn't push her. Little or no blood and a pushed deer = a lost deer. We got back out to the rd and and started walking back to my car. I put my light in a filed and saw what I thought was a clump of snow in the field. My buddy was at a different angle and saw brown...... he said that's your deer. We went and got it and found that her hide had covered the hole. I had to move the hide at least an inch to get back onto the hole. When I field dressed her I found out that I gotten a double lung hit. Shwe ran a total of 125yds.