He said it just stood there for 5 minutes after he shot.

Hope you guys are right assuming he doesn't find it. Hate for a deer to go to waste like that.

Why no follow up shot to finish him off?

Neighbor shot a big buck this am and asked if he could track it through my place. I said yes.

After 200 yards of "some meat and blood" turning into pin drop blood, they lost trail.

This was where buck was first standing after shot:

Looks like lung to me. Yall think it's dead? Gonna resume hunt tomorrow if they don't find him.

Why no follow up shot to finish him off?

If he stood there for 5 minutes and that is all he bled, then that's only a drop every couple seconds. That's not "good blood". That is definitely not lung shot....lung blood is bright red and frothy. That blood is dark and thick.

Like others said, if there is water in the area he will almost certainly head towards it. I've had a deer bleed much, much more and never been found after tracking for 1/2 mile, like multiple puddles of blood for several hundred yards. It sucks.

Agree, therancher.

Not to go into details, but the man that shot this buck has had some very serious health issues that I didn't know about until recently.

He used to send me pics of younger, promising deer that I'd always say, "Hold off on that guy, too young." but now I just want him to have success. He let a buddy shoot a really big 8 a couple of years ago and as they were celebrating, the dang thing got up and ran off and they never found him.

Fast forward to this year, and this buck was the first legal one he had a shot at and he took it. Why he didn't pop off a 2nd round while it was just standing there, I'll never know. After it ran into the field, he texted me asking if he could follow it but I didn't see the text for a few minutes at which point I told him "Of course". He got a second shot but it was running and may or may not have connected. The tracker who is a former guide said he found bone fragment, but a very small amount.

I didn't make it out there yesterday because it rained slowly but steadily all night and my land is at the back of an old dirt road that can get a truck stuck really quickly. I'm heading out there today, but I'm not optimistic because there is a ton of standing hay (you'd never find one there without buzzards). Gonna look in the creek and see if there's a buck limping around.