1. You played the chances and waited and were unluck that the coyotes found it. Judgement call there, coyotes aren't anyones fault.

2. You are 8 hours into the tracking job -0 meaning you had a bad hit. You are 400 yards from the deer, meaning it traveled a long way around or you're a poor tracker. You still yet recover the deer, meat is good, and call it very very lucky someone else found it for you, because it sure sounds like you wouldn't have. Is it a true kill and recover ? Not really, no.

3. Maybe actually tracking/trailing the animal and finding it ??

4. I never doubted it was the same deer, I think few people do.

Zaft took a poor shot on a huge whitetail, hit it far back and high, had a poor blood trail and no blood trail after a little ways and looked for it 3 seperate times. He was smart leaving a poorly hit deer overnight, no one doubts that. I think the key is, how far from where he shot the deer to the farmers field ? No one says ... why ? I bet you its 1/2 mile or maybe even a full mile from the site where the shot was taken, thats why. And that there indicates a poor hit, a deer that would never have been retrieved and a pickup IMO. That other big deer in the same North American Whitetail issue - it too was a pickup, and had a very similar scenario to Zaft, except it took him 2 months to find the deer.

Another big question, and what I feel happened, is that the deer was weakened, laid down in that field after going a half mile, maybe more, and he was found and brought down by coyotes. Also, I killed a 200 pound, 8 pointer in Kansas in 2000 and the shot was at dusk. Not wanting to push the deer on an uncertain shot at night, I waited until morning. Wasn't neccessary, as the animal only went about 150 yards. Coyotes had eaten 1/4 of the meat, starting with guts and backstrap and ham. They never touched the front end or the cape. I recovered the meat that I could and consider it a kill. I tracked the animal, my hit was good, the coyotes were unfortunate but I'd make the same decision again.