It is easy to over complicate this. My main suggestion is having a least two decent flashlights, and a spare in the truck. Also flagging tape, or TP. Most deer hit in the vitals won't go much over 100 yards. That is with a rifle. After the shot, watch the deer. If you lose sight of it, look for signs of a hit. If you lose the blood trail, and know the direction it was going, try that. If no luck, make circles around the last blood spot. Last season I shot a deer at dusk and had trouble finding it. I thought I watched it run off, and spent my time looking in that direction. No luck. I went back into the blind, and double checked where the deer was when I shot it. I knew a solid hit was made. I started the circle method, and found the deer, about 75 yards away from where I thought it ran off. The heart was almost blown out, yet there was no blood, and it ran less that 100 yards. It turns out that I saw a different deer running away, and had lost sight of the one I shot. Moral of the story, don't give up.

Having tracked a lot of deer too in my life, especially when dealing with day hunters....IMO the first thing you don't do is call for help. If you need help and get it then control the scene. Most folks want to help, but they will walk all over blood and tracks during the process not knowing any better. So communicate with your buddies and SLOW DOWN. Seen a LOT of good folks coming in to help find an animal that does more harm than good.

I personally don't like LED lights for blood trailing, I see blood/sign better with incandescent bulbs or a Coleman Lantern. IMO the biggest thing is calm down and be quiet. Have jumped more animals than necessary because everyone is hollering back & forth and zig zagging prematurely. I have tracked several deer that were in the process of expiring, could have finished them with one close range shot before they got jumped and ran for 500 yards into the brush.

If you draw blood, control the scene until you can't. That's when your buddies and the dogs come into play when you get desperate. Many more recoveries could be successful if someone just controlled who goes where and when.

Tracking an animal at night is no different than during the day to me. Same principles apply.

Tracking is just more difficult in the dark.

After the shot, wait 15 or more minutes before you leave the stand. Let the deer expire. And look at it from the deer’s perspective. There was a loud noise and it feels weak. The noise isn’t associated with a human unless that human was seen, but the deer has felt a strike and is frightened. The deer runs or walks for a short distance, and if not frightened into running further by voices or other human activity, will stop to rest. The weakness grows. The deer leans on a tree, then slides to the ground and will expire. It will be some version of that, but complicated more by poor bullet placement.

When looking for blood, often it’ll be not just on the ground, but on bushes and hip high on trees, particularly if the bullet placement was in the lungs.

Also, when weak, they’ll drag their hooves and turn up leaves. If the leaves are wet, the path can be seen. That can be helpful.

Very knowledgeable input . I appreciate it . Sounds like my best bet is to get more comfy with my .308

What I've seen several times is that a wounded deer will get on a game trail or a cattle trail and stay on it until they are almost dead. So if I'm following drops of blood down a trail and they suddenly disappear, I take a real good look around because there's a good chance the deer is close by and dead.

Another thing that you need to do is practice. I did this when I was young...hell, I still do it. Often times I will shoot a deer and watch it run, then see it fall. Even when I know where the deer fell, I will go to the spot of the shot, find a blood trail, and track the deer. I practice looking for the blood, and looking for drag marks in the leaves.

Why?

purchase a really good LED flashlight and go hunt!
We found 2 of them last year at the lease at night without problem and one of them took a bullet and went about 300 yards. Good hit but he just took it and ran!!

Also worthy of mention is using a rangefinder to help with tracking (daylight). If it’s a long shot, and the deer was standing next to a bush or tree, range to there. Once you’re out of the stand and walk 250 yards, those bushes all look about the same. Range back to the stand from where you are and you can identify the right bush.

In instances where there wasn't the best shot placement and you have to trail blood:

1. Get a great flashlight the brighter the better in most cases. I carry an 1,100 lumen streamlight small but bright as a spotlight.
2. Start where you shot the deer and if you find blood go from there.
3. Resist the urge to go running around in the woods looking for a deer when you have no idea where it dropped...if you hear it crash or see trees shake when it goes down thats a different story
4. Do no let others go roaming around looking for the wounded deer if you have a blood trail, if it drys up or you can no longer find blood walk half circles in the direction you last saw the deer, increasing your radius as you go back and forth.
5. If you think for whatever reason it was a bad shot it may be best to back out and wait till morning.

I'm sure there are many other but these are the basics I go by.

Not always true. Too bright can wash out the blood in your vision. I once took the theory of brighter is better and took a 1,000,000 candle power spot light to track a deer. I couldn't find squat. My son found some blood using his cell phone light. When I pointed the spotlight at the place that he found the blood, I couldn't see blood at all. The light was too bright. We tracked the deer using our cell phone lights and found it pretty easily. If the only thing I had was the spot light, I never would have found her.

That’s why I was so pleased with that Milwaukee M12 light. Wide beam and very even light intensity. And I ran out of energy before the battery did. Blood was easy to spot.