I don't know if this is the "average" case, but a buddy of mine shot a big ten last fall through the "no-man's land". He went to great lengths to find the deer over the next three days. He even hired a tandem para-sail pilot to take him over the area. There were a bunch of other people at the rental place that were interested in the situation, and they all tagged along. There was about 6 or 7 of them buzzing over the giant field where he lost the blood trail. All the effort was to no avail. Three weeks later he walked through that same field and basically followed his nose to the decayed remains of his 140" 10 pointer.

So at least in this case the shot was fatal, but not lethal enough to lead to recovery. I commended him for his effort in the search. Too bad it went to waste. [&o]

Edit: By the way, it was a clean pass-through with fixed blade heads.