Will a neck shot work with a bow? Sure, it probably will not kill teh animal dead, but it MIGHT drop it right there, if you can hit the 2 inch spine solid. If you glance off it sorry, no deer. You might also luck out and sever the wind pipe.

As for the kill or live part, wrong, you just put a hole in the animal, you might ahve done nerve damage, you might have done breathing damage and they all MIGHT result in a wounded deer that dies later from infection or disease.

Add to this the fact that the neck is usually moving a bit, unless the deer is staring straight at you in which case it's probably going to react to teh shot and the neck won't be there when the arrow gets there, so who knows where you are going to hit.

the chest gives the largest room for error, error in either misjudged yardage, shot form falling apart, arrow deflection ,deer movement etc. YOu have roughly an 8 inch circle on a deer, larger on elk/moose. If you put the arrow anywhere in there, you probably will have a dead deer.

As for your tracking question, well, unless it drops in its tracks it will run and can cover a good amount of ground in 15 seconds, depending on the terrain, you might see it the whole way, you might not.

As for waiting, this is a "better safe than sorry" situation. Once the animal is dead, waiting longer is harmless, he isn't going anywhere. Until he's dead you might just push him. If you don't destroy both lungs or the heart, they can live for several minutes, a single lung/liver hit can live a good amount. For example I shot an elk the fall, results of the shot were center punched one lung, took out the back of the second lung and cut a hole in the liver. As luck would have it the elk never left my sight. He ran about 40 yards and turned around to look for the cows he was trying to get to. He then tipped over. He was down on the ground in about 15 seconds. He stayed alive for about 15 minutes. He had alot of trouble breathing and his head crashed over several times, but he kept picking it back up. He never got back onto his feet, but who knows what he would have done had I come out of my hiding spot and had him see me. Better safe than sorry.

Welcome to bow hunting, its VERY different from gun hunting, the weapons kill in different manners.

--Bob