A couple of tips. It depends on if you have any landmarks. I shoot a lot of pastures and fields so there aren't any. The ground looks different anyway when you walk out looking for spore. I set up some sort of marker a simple stick will do, pointing at the spot where the bullet hit. A little toilet paper marked and you can walk back look down your stick and make sure you are searching the right spot. It is really easy to be 20-30 feet or more off.

I take a roll of toilet paper with me so I can mark what I've already checked. I walk in kind of an ever widening spiral.

Take periodic breaks, tracking is the kind of thing that can numb your thought process, your vision can blur.

Remember where they came from, not always but often enough to be a trend, when wounded, if they don't hunker down soon, they will reverse direction and head back the way they came. The best explanation I have heard as to why, is the only safe direction is the one they just came from.

I think every hunter ought to have a dog or access to a dog.

I've spent an hour covering a couple of hundred square feet, sounds like you kind of half assed it some. Ethically and practically, you just can't do that sort thing.

My first bow hunt I lung shot a Mulley, he took off up hill into the Chaparral, I walked around all hunched over for a couple of hours. It was getting way hot in there by the time I gave up. I actually tripped over him on my way back to the truck. I learned a lesson that day, you have to use a system and you have to be thorough. If you walk past it, you are looking for nothing.