Ive killed approaching 200 Whitetails in my life and assited in tracking at least 100 more and will tell you, no 2 situations are the same and sometimes you make the right choice and sometimes you dont. Gotta make your best decision based on what the sign is telling you and your "gut feeling" i have done both, found a deer the next morning, often not far from where I stopped the night before, as well as pushed too hard and fast and jumped a wounded deer and have it run off never to be found.
One case in point was a large 8 point i arrowed 2 years ago. Shot looked and felt good, heard a nice thump on impact etc. After waiting an hour to climb down i found my blood covered arrow and had a good blood trail. By that I mean steady flow with multiple at least pie plate size puddles of blood where the deer had paused to pick its escape route. After 200 yds of this, still no deer. At this point the blood started to taper and get spotty but still decent amount when found. Kept on it for another 300 yards getting more sparse. Led onto property I am not allowed access to so that was the end of it and I figured it was dead there. Fast forward 3 weeks and what do I see on my trail cam but this same deer with an obvious shoulder wound. A week after this, on Halloween, I arrowed this same buck again. Only a 50yd track this time and found. Post mortem showed first arrow had hit the shoulder bone and deflected down though the underarm area making a large wound with ALOT of blood loss but obviosly not fatal as the wound was partially healed up and the buck was chasing a doe when killed so obviously not too bad off. ANYONE who saw the initial bloodtrail would think there was no way the deer lived, but it obviously did!
