You didn't say how far you were able to watch him after the hit or his reaction (were his legs "pinned" together by the arrow), or the location of the arrow in the ham.

I would concur with most of my peers here. Recovery on a ham hit deer isn't as remote as one might think. I have seen it done 3 times and recovered deer three times. One only went 40 yards the other two went quite a ways but the trail wasn't that hard to follow.

If it was quartering away at a severe angle you probably only got one ham unless the arrow entered way back in the rear of the leg.

Other than try and recover the deer, all you can do now is learn from your experience. I don't know what your practice routine is, but I would trust you practice with your equipment faithfully. If not, that is a huge problem. That said, I know of people that practice but when a deer comes in they suffer an emotional meltdown and just have a hard time holding it together. They could no more pick out a "spot" on a deer to shoot than the man in the moon. One gentleman I know of dropped his bow when a deer came to his stand he was so nervous. In a case like this, one needs a number of deer encounters to get this problem under control.

Don't be too discouraged. Learn from your mistakes. Rise from the agony of failure and become better, become successful. I have seen even the best of hunters make unbelievable blunders, but they don't repeat the same mistake twice. Those who have never failed have never played long enough to get a callouse.

Now go get that buck.... and show us the pics!