i usually hunt from the ground and twice this year i've had complete pass throughs and haven't been able to find the bolts yet(and yes i found those deer). this happened to me once last year and i finally found it about 5 months later after many hours of searching. i have both camo and black bolts with both orange/yellow and red/white "feathers". neither is better imo. i've thought of painting my bolts a dif. color but am afraid of that effecting the flight of the bolt. does anyone have any suggestions?

Yes, accept the fact that you will not be retrieving your arrows. When I do recover an arrow I retire it anyways. Why take the chance over ten bucks for all the work, preparation, hopes, money etc put into a hunt?
The only real chance of recovering from a ground blind shot is using an illuminated rear nock on your arrow.

I hunt with an Equinox and if you are going to find your arrows You need aluminum and a lighted nock of some kind,and a metal detector helps too, haven't lost an arrow in 2 years

if your fletching or wrap fluoresces then you can try an LED black light. This will show up the arrow quite well in the dark.

MJS

Hunt from an elevated position and find bent/broken arrows or hunt from the ground level and lose good arrows. That's the nature of the beast.

Tried it, it works great. Thanks for the tip.

That black light idea is a great one! Wouldn't the metal detector would pick up the broadhead? Why would you need to use aluminum arrows?

I go some cabelas x bow shafts with a blinking light hopefuly, i'll see this fall, with a hit. Rich