so i led him by quite a bit and aimed up a few inches and squeezed off a round. offhand too. damn good shot i think
wow i would call that a lucky as hell shot! sorry! i will not argue the point buy some shells and hit the range!
back to the orginally question i think it could have been a shot that hit the leg or guts. deer will run on 3 legs just fine but the lose a lot of blood. this happened to a guy i hunted with this year. hit a little low on the front shoulder and blew the leg off and the deer ran over a half mile with a nice big blood trail. hit a tinny stream and the blood dissapeared!!! ti don't know if he ran downstream or what but it sure was weird.