While I hate to hear these kinds of stories, I' m a statistic of what you just mentioned as well. For the past two seasons, I have solidly shot two deer (one each year) with a Knight and tracked them for hours on end. I shot one last year across a field (on the way to my stand) and thought I missed as the deer ran off. I walked to where the doe was standing and _nothing_. I marked it off as a miss and then continuing on to my stand after searching for blood for an hour, I then found a HUGE puddle of blood about 150 yards away where the deer had double-backed in the woods and I crossed its trail (this has happened on two separate occasions). I then followed the trail for 4 hours and it was getting warm outside (55 degrees) to the point where the blood was drying on me and becoming harder to find in the brown leaves. After following the trail for 4 hours and what seems like 2-3 miles through the woods, I lost it. I was so mad at myself and couldn' t stand the thought of this happening again to me as a very similar scenario happened just a year earlier. I checked my gun and it was on so I' m coughing it up to the fact that muzzleloaders just don' t have the knockdown of a modern rifle. I' m using Hodgon 777 in my Knight pushing 90gr of powder and using a Hornady XTP 240gr sabot. One thing for sure, muzzloloaders leave large holes in the deer but don' t have the static shock.