deer & ELK do occasionally run even when hit correctly,but a bad hit almost always results in tracking job, one of my elk hunting buddy's shot a nice 4x4 mule deer with a 7mm mag, at about 300 yards range, on dry rocky ground with sparse cover, that proceeded to run/ jump up over a ridge out of site, we figured it would be a long tracking job, because there was no obvious blood trail but there was hair found at the bullet impact site that had blood on it, so one of us stayed where he shot from (the shooter naturally) who directed a second guy to where the deer was hit,(you might be surprised at how different things look from a different perspective so its advisable to have the shooter stay put and direct the second (TRACKER,) to where the game was shot,) where he tied a 1 foot long orange surveyors tape to a bush, the shooter then directed the tracker to the location where the buck was last seen, where he tied a second 1 foot long orange surveyors tape to a bush , he then took a compass reading to get a general direction of travel , the shooter now came up to the second tape and stood there with binoculars visually searching, while the tracker searched in short 180 degree sweeps until he found more hair/blood, where he tied a 1 foot long orange surveyors tape to a bush , this process continued for about 120 yards and took about 30 minutes, and two more tapes on branches, where the buck was eventually tracked & found, with a fatal high liver hit and indications were that the bullet zipped thru without expanding.
the reason we knew to follow this was previously a few years before , frank had shot an ELK at about 300 yards that ran a short distance, but frank had rushed over to where he THOUGH he had shot the elk, but spend over two hours looking in the wrong area, only when we had frank go back to the place he shot from and directed a second hunter to where he shot the elk with hand signals did we find that frank had spent a good deal of time looking in the wrong section of the far canyon slope looking in the wrong area, because by the time frank crossed the canyon things looked very different.
http://www.grainger.com/Grainger/CH-HANSON-Flagging-Tape-1EC17
http://www.amazon.com/Military-Style-Le ... 394&sr=1-2
the reason we knew to follow this was previously a few years before , frank had shot an ELK at about 300 yards that ran a short distance, but frank had rushed over to where he THOUGH he had shot the elk, but spend over two hours looking in the wrong area, only when we had frank go back to the place he shot from and directed a second hunter to where he shot the elk with hand signals did we find that frank had spent a good deal of time looking in the wrong section of the far canyon slope looking in the wrong area, because by the time frank crossed the canyon things looked very different.
http://www.grainger.com/Grainger/CH-HANSON-Flagging-Tape-1EC17
http://www.amazon.com/Military-Style-Le ... 394&sr=1-2