Ouch that hurts. Now you see why i will not change my set up? When something has worked so well for so many years, stick with it.

There is a retired colonelin town who is an avid hunter whohas a wired haired Dachshundtracking dog.He does a lot of tracking of deer and elk for folks gratis.Herea tracking dog has to be kept on a leash because of the wild hogs.

iuse a high intensity light with a bluelens to track wounded game at night. If there is a small drop of blood the light will make it shine.It finds small droplets of blood thatare not visible to the naked eye.

falcon that is interesting.. I have a old friend that tracks with a white gas Colman Mantle lantern. He claims that the old gas lantern makes blood show up.

I guess I'm old fashion. I just get down in the leaves and stare I've seen the lights and such but I guess I'm just too stuck in my ways.

My cousin a couple years ago shot a little 8 pointer high behind the shoulder and basically only hit meat. We tracked that deer for over a mile. I spent the good part of that day on all fours in the leaves. We'd find drops of blood about the size of a bb about every 10-15 yards. Then we'd go a 100 yards or so and finda softball size spot where I guess he stood for a min. Finally after about 4 or 5 hours we jumped him and he left with his tail up. We came back the next day but no sign of him. Hopefully he was shot by someone else soon after that. That was by far the hardest tracking job I've ever done.

Chap made a good point though. Sometimes they don't start bleedin' right away. I made a perfect hit on a small buck one year w/a 30-30. He went about 30 yards before he started bleedin' but buddy when he did it was like you poured it out of a bucket. It was a short tracking job from there Point is, just because there isn't blood or hair at the place where the deer was standing doesn't mean that you didn't hit it. Start walkin' in the direction it left in, you may get a pleasent surprise.

I wouldn't shoot an elk with a normal 250gr SW to begin with, it is a deer bullet and if the shot hit the shoulder it would not be out of reason to under-penetrate.

This is why I just shake my head when people post or say that "that darn bullet, I made a perfect shot but it got away." Now, I have always lived in overpopulated deer areas so I have shot more than my fair share of whitetails -- I've lost count in the past few years but it must be over 125-150 by now. 80% of them with a muzzleloader, haven't hunted a single hunt with anything else in at least 5 years. I have shot the old HTP, XTP, 200 and 250 SW, QT, Keith Nose, and DC bullets. The one common factor is that a deer shot through the lungs with any bullet goes down within 200 yards.. 95% of them within 100 yds. It doesn't take a hand grenade exit wound to do it either, just a hole through the lungs. There are very few bullets out there I think are truly bad bullets.

If the deer is shot, and someone scours every inch within a 200yd circle and can't find it, I am extremely skeptical that they hit it where they say they did. I've helped recover enough "perfect shot" deer with holes from their stomach all the way to their rump to believe people can reliably judge a hit that well.

On whitetails, myself and all of my close hunting buddies shoot either the 200 or 250gr SW. None of us have lost a deer with them. But I would not use either on an elk, I am taking my Omega on an elk hunt this week so I went to the effort to re-sight the gun for an appropriate bullet.

It's the high lung shots that tend not to bleed, those are harder to track. If I cannot find blood for whatever reason, I break out the TP and mark whatever I can find. My first trick is to try to think like the deer, pick what I think their primary escape route would be, and go 100-200 yds down that first without even tracking. About 75% of the time I find the deer with no further effort -- wounded deer like to follow trails if they can and head for cover. No real tricks other than that.

If I am concerned with a blood trail, I would try to pick an over-expanding bullet like the Barnes Expander or a PR Keith Nose. I hunt a lot of open ground so a deer running 50 yds (most of mine don't go further than that) don't pose a recovery problem. In heavy woods I'd opt for a little more expansion. The Barnes Expander I have never shot from a ML though, I have used it in shotguns and seen it 1) ruin whole shoulders, and 2) fail to penetrate the shoulder blade of a small doe, exploded on the surface.

Bingo
Killed a lot of deer in my lifetime,over 300of them. Killed about 20 with .50 muzzleloaders. Everything you say is true.

Have tracked downnumerous deer, hogsandan elk that other hunters claimed they hit in the lungs, etc. With the exception of the elk, every one of them was shot in the stomach or guts. Saw dust fly off the elk when it was hit. The guy claimed hehad not hit it and drove off.Tracked that elk about one-quarter mile where it was found dead.

The search for the magic bullet that will turn a gut shot into a bang flop every time continues.