Photos by Wayne van Zwoll.

Getting from where an animal has been to where it is can be hard work. It's also the essence of hunting. Whether you set an ambush, still-hunt or follow tracks, putting game in your sights requires that you learn the country and animal habit, commit time and effort to the chase and mind all the little gremlins that at the last minute conspire to deny you a shot--it's often the same after you shoot.

"Likely he'll slow," Bill said. "I'll swing wide, maybe cut tracks past the oaks." I trudged back through the weeds to where the buck had taken my bullet. Splayed prints in patches of granular snow led me to oak leaves that had sifted over any blood I might have missed. I paused. He'd landed right here--then leapt again. At the shot, he'd buckled in front and nosed into the weeds. He'd risen before I reached him; fled before I could aim; vanished with a chatter of hooves in oak litter--leaving dry track.

When you hit an animal, you can't be sure the bullet will be quickly fatal. Animal reaction gives you clues, as does your sight picture, but both can fool you. A deer that drops instantly may be instantly dead. The bullet may also have clipped a spinal process or struck a shoulder or hip. A sight picture that looks perfect in recoil won't tell you that the wind was stronger or the distance longer than you thought. What you do after a hit has a lot to do with your odds of retrieving the animal.

In The Beginning
First, chamber another round and prepare to fire again. If the animal is still afoot, shoot! Better to make one unnecessary wound than risk losing that buck! If your view is obscured, it's still a good idea to stay where you are for a couple of minutes. Usually, your best chance for a follow-up shot will come near the place you first fired. Changing places takes time and boosts your pulse, diminishing your ability to shoot quickly or accurately if the deer reappears.

If the animal drops where you can see it, keep your crosswire on it for a minute or so. As a hunting guide, I often had to restrain clients from running to their trophies. One hunter dropped a bull elk at short range. Without cycling the bolt, he turned to slap me on the back. "Get ready to shoot again!" I barked--as the animal rose and galloped off. Visibly shaken, he gasped, "How could he possibly have survived that first hit?"

The answer, of course, is that elk have huge muscles and a tremendous will to live. Trauma that would finish a human may not incapacitate even relatively small, thin-skinned animals like whitetail deer. An 800-pound elk can move far after destructive, even lethal hits from powerful rifles. Any animal that can subsist on twigs and lose 20 percent of its weight every winter while enduring sub-zero temperatures and knee-deep snow, then bounce back to climb around the mountains all summer and procreate wildly for two weeks without eating can absorb terrific punishment. The sight or smell of a human can also spur a stricken animal to one last adrenaline-charged effort.

Hunters often miss signs above ground. Check well above the levels you might think signs would commonly be found.

While elk are notoriously tough, I've trailed several deer that by all logic should have succumbed quickly to the first bullet. One blacktail, punched through the ribs by a .264 Winchester Magnum, dashed into a dense thicket of wild blackberries, then got down on its knees and crawled into a veritable tunnel in the briars. A whitetail ran eighty yards, then hooked into a swamp after taking a .300 Savage bullet through the lungs. A mule deer absorbed two solid hits from my .30-06 but managed to plunge down the mountain into a copse of conifers. I recovered the first two bucks, lost the third. I'm certain that it too expired. Alas, a snowstorm descended even as I delivered my second shot, a veil of fat flakes obscuring not only the deer but blanketing its track and blood. In the morning, I climbed back to resume the search but found the slope shin-deep in snow.

In cases like this last, quick pursuit makes sense, but don't deny yourself those two minutes after the hit. Reload, be still, watch, listen. Ordinarily, the sound of a gunshot doesn't alarm game. The impact of a bullet can send it off, but the animal may not know where it came from. By staying where you are right after a shot, you keep yourself off the animal's radar, allowing it to stop or even bed nearby.

Before you move, identify landmarks to help you find the spot where the animal took your shot, and the place where you lost sight of your quarry. Next, mark your own position. You may want to re-enact the shot later, and finding the place from which you shot is seldom as easy as you think.