Not sure which section to post this in, but figured the guys using small calibers would know the best way. Some folks wait 30 minutes or so after the shot before they look for the animal. I have about zero experience bow hunting and that might be the best with a bow, I don't know. The folks that do wait, this could be a carry over from bow hunting??? I go immediately after the shot for several reasons. If the deer is down and suffering, I want to finish it now. If I have a tracking job, I want to get started. I am done hunting until that animal is gutted out and taken care of. I'm not going to shoot a second animal before the first one is taken care of. Doing it this way, possibly lucky, but I've only had one downed deer that got back to it's feet. That's another story, a yearling buck got up and staggered 100 yards or so. How is the big mystery. Was shot with 30-06 and 150 grain bullet, through the boiler room and why that deer was not dead instantly is a big mystery to me. Worked out well, each step was a step I didn't have to carry it, it headed towards the road.

Anxious to see what folks say..... If I'm sure of my shot, I go right away. After much deliberation and discussion friends and I have come to the conclusion an animal well hit will lose hydraulics within about 12 seconds-give or take.

If I'm not sure of the shot( I generally don't take it...but thats another topic...) I will give the animal some time.... Thankfully I can't remember the last time I did that...its been awhile.

Rifle or pistol hunting I pretty much go right away. UNLESS I'm in a TX blind and waiting to see if some hogs come in later.

Pretty much right away. 10-20 seconds of bleeding out two holes usually does the trick. I watch until I can't see them if they run, then take up a stealthy trailing action. Thankfully, in all my years of hunting, have only lost one truly shot BG animal. Still don't know how he could have left all that blood and still ran off. Tracked him for 1.5 miles or better in a loop and he went into neighbor's ground. Neighbor found him later in the season, dead of course. Big buck shot dead smack in the shoulder with a 225 Nosler BT from my Whelen. He ran a few steps, went down and bled a gallon of blood. Got up, crossed the creek and that was the start of it. We had just plain bad luck on the trailing job and bumped him from his sick bed in a place we could not get a shot. I assume that I did not get penetration or hit him too far forward. Will never know.

If your shot placement is good, and you've used enough gun, doesn't much matter, IMHO. The deer probably wont go too far.
Where I hunt near here, most of our shots are from an elevated stand. If the deer goes down within our sight, we stay up in the stand a while in case the critter gets up and tries to move.
Once in a while the deer is not hurt too badly... has not sprung a big leak... then our tracking skills get tested. That's the way it works.

This is what I was taught by a very successful hunter many years ago.
If the animal is hit hard and correctly, but runs, try a second running shot high in the shoulder, this will drop most animals instantly. If the it doesn't drop, follow up immediately.
If the animal is poorly hit and runs, same as above with follow up shots, if you miss, wait for the animal to bed and stiffen up, maybe 1/2 an hour is sufficient for this.
I rarely hit an animal other than where intended, but have had deer take a step just as I squeezed the trigger, hitting in the diaphram, luckily my follow up shot took out the spine and the deer expired instantly. I have also had to follow up on deer shot through the lungs for more than 100yrds, in some very thick steep country which almost resulted in a lost animal.
To date, have lost one animal, a very large Sambar stag shot at extreme uphill angle, taking him through the very high shoulder, missing everything vital, he was shot about 18 months later on my place by a mate, the bullet wounds had healed and he was none the worse for my blunder, although he would have been pretty sore and unable to travel very far just after the incident.
I also follow up just as I would hunting DG, it's just how I was taught, I'm naturally gifted at off hand shooting at running game, been doing it since I was around 8 years old on rabbits and foxes.

Hope this helps.

Cheers.

Different situations/different locations = Different methods.

With good shot placement, the animal often falls down to stay within sight of where it was standing when hit.

Sometimes I go immediately, sometimes I will wait about 10 minutes.

I have yet to see a lot of "One Size Fits All" situations.

Weather conditions, vegetative cover, terrain all figure in or should.

To me it is a case of every instance requires a different response.

Where a person is hunting can also make a difference. Many places in Texas are such that an animal traveling 200 yards can end up on someone else's property and then it becomes a matter for the Game Warden to sort out.

Here in Europe I have been always told something like: relax and take the time to smoke a cigarette, then begin to search.

Often it worked well. I learned it in a Red Deer hunt.

I bow and rifle hunt and I recover animals with a totally different strategy.
Bow: wait at least 30 min.
Rifle when I'm certain of shot placement: I can recover at my usual slow pace.
Rifle when unsure of the shot damage or didn't see the animal fall: I hustle right over to make a finishing shot.
This has served me well for over 45 big game seasons!
Zeke

With properly place arrow or bullet there is no need to wait.

It is when the shot is muffed a bit then at least 30 minutes

I also believe to keep shooting if one can and the animal is moving.

Depends

I never follow something immediately that I don't see go down. My logic follows that if I don't push it, it will lie down soon, if it dies in five minutes, it's 100 yards away. If I push it, they can run a hell of a long ways in five minutes. Ask one of the guys who have hunted Africa a bit about how far a hit zebra can run in two or three minutes!

I have seen even a deer hit high in the front leg lie down, then they have trouble getting up, finish them off lying down from a superficial wound. If you took right after them, they are obviously capable of going a couple of miles on three legs. If the animal doesn't drop at the shot, I wait twenty minutes.

Most of the guys I hunt with in the US seldom if ever practice their shooting. They have almost no ability to call their shots. Not knowing where an animal is hit makes it tough to decide how to follow up.

If they drop, I immediately chamber another round and watch them through the scope to make sure they don't get up. It's usually over in 30 seconds or less which is much faster than I can get out of the stand and make it to them.

If they run, I give them 5-10 minutes before I go looking for them. Of course, I'm a firm believer of keep shooting them until they drop so if I can get a 2nd shot off, I will take it.

I've been fortunate that I've only had one animal run in the last 7 years. The rest have just dropped.

Scott--they all dropped? Didn't know you had started using a .223.

If they drop in sight i wait for two minutes ready to shoot if they are trying to run again.

If they go out of sight i wait 5-10min before a take a look. If then i see plenty of blood i take the tracks at once. If i dont see blood or only a little blood i wait for one hour before i take the track.

quote:

Originally posted by carpetman1:
Scott--they all dropped? Didn't know you had started using a .223.

Ha ha, up until this year mostly 257R, 6.5x55 and 6.8 SPC. I had a deer run 20 yards with the 6.5x55.

I still haven't used a 223 so i'm still not a stunt shooter.

Theres a lot to be said for stunt shooting....

As others have said, shoot em right and they don't go anywhere

Just use common since, if you know the shot is good wonder off down there, If its a gut shot give it time to lay down and stiffen up, time ..Use enough gun to have a blood trail and work on your tracking skills, that's the most important skill you can have..Lots of hunters can follow a big blood trail or a set of tracks, learn the other stuff.

The time you wait probably don't make as much difference as the amount of time you look for the
animal bedded ahead of you, with its head up.
If you don''t have a few years experience bowhunting, you really don't know sickem. Kenny

A hundred yards in a thick swamp is a very long distance (in which direction?). On a sage flat it's nothing much, although you have to keep an eye on the animal until it drops because you can pass a dead antelope in knee-deep sage and not see it from 20 feet.

quote:

Originally posted by Brice:
Most of the guys I hunt with in the US seldom if ever practice their shooting. They have almost no ability to call their shots. Not knowing where an animal is hit makes it tough to decide how to follow up.

You may want to look at upgrading your peers...
Everyone I hunt with practices regularly and more than 9 out of 10 times knows exactly what their shot was like and definitely knows if it was bad.
Typically we hunt mule deer and elk in open and or mountainous terrain and usually follow up immediately if it didn't drop right there.
When hunting whitetails out of a blind we usually let them lay where they fell in hopes that more deer will show up to shoot if we aren't out of the blind spooking them off.
Good shooting breeds confidence, the better you shoot the less tracking you do however we all have our moments it happens.

If I can't see the animal, then 10-20 minutes is a guideline I use. Even if I know it was a good shot, things happen.

If the terrain is thick or I think the tracking could be difficult, I will try to locate the point where I hit the animal and wait there instead of wherever I was.