In that situation I prefer to wait until daylight the following morning to resume tracking. Here in Maine you can' t have a loaded gun after 1/2 hour after sunset either. Waiting through the night is hard on the nerves, but it gives you a better chance of recovering the animal in certain cases. If the shot was questionable, the extra time will allow the animal to expire, or it may at least bed down and stay put.

Two years ago I shot a nice 8-pointer on the last day of rifle season. I knew the shot was good, but after hours of searching we had found no blood at all, and we ran out of daylight. The muzzleloader season begins right after the rifle season ends, but in Maine you can' t hunt on Sundays, and I had shot the buck on Saturday! I called the local game warden and told him I had shot a nice buck but couldn' t find it, and I asked him what I should do. He informed me that we could go look for the deer, but couldn' t bring guns with us. He also said that if the deer was wounded but still alive, we would have to go back out of the woods and call the wardens, who would come finish it off. After doing a " grid" type search all day Sunday, we eventually found the deer right before dark, right when we had given up. It had not gone more than 50 yards from where I shot it, but it was piled up in a thicket, completely covered by a thick spruce tree. The bullet had hit a little high, blowing out his lungs and traveling diagonally through the animal before lodging in the hindquarter. A high entrance wound and no exit wound meant no blood trail at all.

I know people who have finished off deer with a well placed thrust of a knife (behind the ear, or cutting the throat). It isn' t exactly pretty, or very humane, but I can' t think of another option if you must track down a deer without a firearm. My advice would be to either wait until the next day, or contact your local wildlife officials and see what they tell you.