The only animals, I've had to seriously track to recover, where nothing to do with bullet or cartridge inadequacies.
They were simply bad shots on my part ! "The nut behind the bolt".
Think I may be the first person on this forum to ever admit that !
No, you're not the only one. I snuck up to within 15 freaking yards of a huge 190" muley buck, and completely whiffed 5 times, from 40-300 yds, with a 7mag.
It is irrelevant what you think. What matters is the TRUTH.