If you in fact followed that deer for close to a mile. I doubt seriously that you got a good hit on him. You probably had a hard hit but not lethal hit. He most likely blood clotted it slowly because you pushed him a lot. The blood that I see does not look like a lethal hit. Good luck.

if you get a blood trail that goes a mile that deer is dead, aint nothin gonna stop that bleeding except surgery. hes out there somewhere dead

I don't know about that... A mile isn't a great distance, and a deer could easily travel that distance in a matter of minutes.

I can leisurely walk a mile in 15 to 20 minutes, and my best time in the 2 mile run back when I was in the Army was 11 minutes 9 seconds... I'd say a deer could easily travel a mile in 5 minutes, so to believe that deer was already a mile away 10 minutes after it was shot isn't a far stretch for me to believe.

That is absolutely not true.

i have tracked enough animals to know a non vital hit will not bleed like those pictutes, even if its an artery thats a vital hit, more than likely just clipped a lung. that deer expired within hrs. hes dead out there.
i had a similar incident this year. i went open sight and made a low shot in the chest. he went around 1200 maybe 1500 yds, blood all the way, very little towards the end, because theres none left, found him 75 yds after no blood.

poke a hole in the chest and he will die if only from suffucation as he cant breath when with the diapragm is damaged

X2

We followed a deer hit for over a mile and a half this year during bow season. The only reason we gave up was because a down pour came in. We knew exactly what buck it was and it even ran by two cameras that night after being shot. Decent blood the whole way. When we stopped at 1 1/2 miles we thought for sure he was dead nearby. Two days later the neighboring farmer went out to look and never found him. Sure enough, three weeks later we have him on four different cameras on 4 different days. We could even see the hit on camera as well. Looked a little low and back but it was 100% the deer we trailed.

From the OP.

I don't know how much tracking you've done in the snow, but I've been doing it for decades. A little blood goes a long ways in the snow.

From what I'm reading in the OP's statement it was not a vital hit. The drops were when the deer was moving, the pools from where it stopped.

I've trailed deer hit like that where the pools were found where the deer actually stopped to feed. Those deer were never found, and I can only guess that this one wasn't either.:confused0024:

OP posted 7 days ago, with no follow up. Why are we arguing, he don't give a **** or he's been in the woods tracking all this time.

*** Iagree with that comment as well as the two posts previous to yours. A deer can look like it's losing a lot of blood, especially on snow, when it's not a vitals wound. I think zrexpilot is way wrong on his post like the others stated!

Pools of blood only mean the deer stopped moving. Like has already been said. But what I like to see is the wait time an following the trail an the pools of blood get closer together as you go. I wonder what the out come was on that deer?