Well in this case no news is bad news.
I am back after three hours and we did not find the buck. I have been hunting since the early 90's and this is the first buck I have lost. After reading the responses and other sites last night I was confident we would go get him. I was more concerned about waisting the trackers time then anything. The thicket the deer ran into is only about two acres and from there it is pretty much open in all directions for several hundred yards. Per the trackers instructions we took the dog to the spot were the deer was at when it was shot. It got the scent and followed it every where I saw the deer go and hit the spot that the deer laid down. The dog then took off on line about 50 yards through the woods and the handler said he was tracking good. The dog popped out the other side of the woods and lost the scent. We went back and started over a couple times and every time it took the same path through the woods. He went out and started doing a perimeter search and I went back in and got on my hands and knees and was finding blood the entire path through the woods. I found blood all the way until it popped out of the woods (the same place the dog lost the track). The last drop of blood was right on the edge to an open field and we spent several hours trying to pick something back up. He was kind of stumped and very appolgetic but I felt worse then he ever will. He was not real concerned by the lack of blood as he said he has tracked a lot of deer and sometimes find lots of blood and no deer and sometimes there is no blood visible and they find the deer. The only thing he could think was the fact that the wind has been blowing pretty hard since yesterday, over 20 mph last night and still a steady 10-15 mph today. The way it started he was confident we would get to it pretty quick. After we tried the thicket several times he then walked across the open field to the wood lines in each direction thinking that the dog might pick the sent back up somewhere were the deer went into another woods. I crawled aroud for an hour trying to find one drop of blood to at least give us an idea what direction it went when it popped out the back side of the woods, I couldn't find it and neither could the dog. Needles to say I am bummed out today.