The guys championing bow hunting as the answer go against my personal experience. I was on a large lease with several individuals. 2 were avid hunters and hunted on the bow opener until the season ended. Those boys were killers. They would pattern and shoot the better bucks before gun season opened. Problem was they recovered only 25% of what they shot. Cannot tell you how many times I crawled through a briar patch 100's of yards following blood and not finding a deer. At the time, I had a decent blood trailing lab that found all my deer. She found very few for them. I was friends with the bow hunters and we eventually got kicked off the lease. Can't say that I blamed the other guys.
That’s on those individuals, not bow hunters as a whole. The bow hunters I know have incredible records on recovery. A less than ideal shot happens from time to time, but it shouldn’t be the norm. I know a lot of gun hunters who lose deer every year, but I don’t blame all gun hunters for lost deer.
