It is so true that these things happen. I have lost 3 deer in 22 years of gun hunting. One I hit in the front leg, one large buck stepped out and watched me gut a friends buck and I made the bad choice to shoot into his chest, and the third one I have no idea what happened. I knocked the third one down watching her doing death kicks when all of sudden she got up and ran off like nothing happened. 3 deer(all nice bucks) in three years with a bow. All three bled well. At least 2 of them I knew were hit well(saw the arrow). Just very frustrated. I do have the experience of watching my grandfather lose a 200 inch buck and having the nieghbor's dog drag him up on their porch, nothing is as bad as that. I think this year is hard because we will losing our lease after this year after 25 years. I really wanted to get a HRB buck off of it and have my name next to my dad's and grandfather's. As a boy I shot the weird ones that no one else wanted and waited my turn at a monster. I have some great bucks and great memories, but my biggest only scores in the 120's. This property produced two 200 inch bucks. Numerous other nice bucks for our family and friends. I just shot and did not recover the biggest one we had on camera this year. Now to hope the rut brings us more big boys. I never cared about score still don't really; just wanted one big one from Hamilton County before they tear apart the last great woods and put more houses on it.