Too many things to reply to to quote them all. It appears damned if you do or don’t is about right. My only experience with a gut shot deer previous to this was one where the blood trail completely dried up in 100 yards. Turned out that intestine had plugged the hole until he filled with blood a few hundred yards later. That deer would have never been recovered had we not happened upon him floating in a pond 1/4 mile a way. Luckily that happened in the morning and not at night. I was afraid that guts may be plugging the hole last night as well when blood began tapering off. With no pool at either fence jump I was afraid he wasn’t hurt too badly. After dark and in the brush would not have offered a second shot. Was I successful, ultimately yes. We recovered the deer. Did it happen the way everyone would have liked, obviously not. I am trying to learn, that’s why I posted this here. I’ve killed around 20 deer in 25 years of hunting and am still learning. My experience is with a rifle and don’t have a lot of experience tracking over a couple hundred feet. Every article I read last night said don’t attempt a track on a gut shot deer for 12 hours. The consensus here seems to be to wait, but not that long.
