wareagleguy,
I have been hunting since I was 6yrs old and am now 46 not long till 47. In all these years I have lost a few deer, not once in a lifetime, but to me deer is a deer, and the horns are just ornaments.
This said, on nearly everyone of them I shot what I thought was a perfect shot. Some of them were found at a later time and yes the hit was inside the ribs and usually through one of the shoulders. The tenacity of some deer is simply mind boggling. These are wild creature who live in extremes day in and day out. Every day is survival for them. Some seem to drop with the lightest hit and some seem to soak up the hit like it was nothing and keep on trucking.
A prime example was a fellow who was hunting close to two miles from our family farm. We were out mid day, setting up a makeshift ground blind in hopes of putting the ambush on a nice buck we had been seeing. We hear leaves rustling and then this fellow ask from back in the woods had we seen a buck come running by. Well we simply looked at each other somewhat stupefied as number one, we had never seen anyone hunting this property, and number two we were probably making enough noise no buck would have come within a hundred yards of us much less the 25 - 30 this fellow was. His story was he shot this nice buck as it ran a doe past his stand. He thought it was a great shot and the buck stumbled and just before falling regained his stride and kept right in behind the doe.
The shot was at around 7 that morning and this was going on around 1 or so. He said he left the area until around 9 and had been tracking ever since, and not seen hide nor hair. At the time I had a 7 month old Golden retriever who didn't know blood on the ground from aspirin in the bottle, but I offered him up for what it was worth. He hit the trail and about drug me to death going through briers and vines that I figured rabbits avoided. Sure enough about 3/4 miles form where we put him on the first drop of blood, my daughter hollers here he is. Well "he" was still kicking and as he tried to get up the fellow put another round through his neck ending the chase. Overall this deer had covered close to three miles from the original shot and nowhere along the way did the fellow or us find any sign of him bedding down or even stopping for that matter. Simply a trail which left drops about every ten to fifteen yards. The hit was a bit high, but still caught the tops of both lungs, and how this deer did what it did was unbelievable. We dressed him out and only needed a handfull of leaves to clean our hands. There was literally no blood remaining in this deer. Even the meat was a pale whitish grey.
Don't beat yourself up too badly. You did all you could do, and sometimes even that is not enough. Me personally I get sick if they run period, I am just too accustomed to them dropping in a heap at the pull of a trigger. I got into archery two years ago and my fist buck, the first year, on opening morning was lost to the critters. To say I was sick is an understatement. It took the whole year for me to get my mid set back so that I could head out once again with a bow. There again, I lost a doe, even with a dog we came up to the last spot of blood in an open pasture and that was that, like someone picked her up with a balloon and nothing else was ever found.
So here I am in the third season, hoping to put that all behind me and bag a nice one. I don't feel that I have left things to chance as I have put in two years now of practice on targets and hogs, so all I can do is the best I can do. Like anything else once you commit, and release the string or pull the trigger, it is out of your hands, and the best you can hope for is your shot is true.
I know from reading your post that your dedicated to the creatures you hunt. This is sometimes hard to find in todays fast paced world. Good luck with your season and remember those past hunts are what make you better on the future hunts. We all have something to learn every time we go out. You have learned your lesson and it has made you a better man for it.
