I did exactly that this bow season. Target buck shows up, shot felt good. It’s an hour before dark. I sat and gathered myself for a few minutes. Climbed down and went back to the camp. My buddy wanted to be with me to recover the buck so I waited on him. He got there about 8:00. We go in and find the arrow, no blood at shot site, guts on arrow. We look very quietly for about 30 yards in the direction he ran and found no blood. I backed out and called Jeff Adams who had found a gut shot buck before for me. Went back in the next morning and the track took 3 minutes. He was just quartered to me a little harder than I remembered in my mind. I caught the front lung. If we would have gone 30 more yards we would have got on the block and went right to him. He didn’t go 125 yards and was dead shortly after the shot. But I didn’t want to chance it. And I needed to check on Jeff’s dogs anyways and make sure he was still treating them well haha.

To each his own. I have only used a dog other than mine twice. And only used mine on easy tracks 4 times. But I enjoy it. I wouldn’t have done it any differently looking back on it.