Are you sure that you searched the actual place on the dam where the hog was hit ?? To me . . . good shot/good hit,good enough bullet,at optimal velocity . . . Should have found blood.
Reason I say this . . . been there,done that. Without good depth preception,the actual distance could be off. You could have looked for blood in the wrong place. ---- pruhdlr
I don't think I could have pinpointed the spot much better had the hog been standing under a feeder. The boat is a great landmark. The oddly shaded spot on the ground near where the hog was located is a patch where the ground is slightly depressed and where the grass is all but gone. Using video from the shot, I was able to very nearly pinpoint the location.
Even so, I wanted the precise location to start my search for tracking purposes. I first employed a bi-direction unilateral search pattern from atop of the dam without venturing into the grass where the hog was shot and so as to to not trod upon any blood splatter. After 3 bidirectional scan attempts started parallel to the boat and going 20 yards distant, results were negative. Next, I placed one of my firefly lights on the ground atop the dam's center, parallel to the location where I believed the hog was shot, marking a center location for a bidirectional, semi-circular search pattern. Traditionally, a spiral search pattern would be used, but the top of the dam made for an explicit bisection, rendering the search of the boat side quite unnecessary. The bidirectional approach also provided the opportunity of seeing the grass from two directions, where as the spiral pattern would only produce views from one direction. I used ~2' increasing increments, changing direction each time I reached the dam's top center. I completed approximately 16 arcs before colliding with trees at the base of the downward side of the dam. The hope was that if I didn't locate the exact location where the hog was shot, that I would location the spray from that location or spray as the hog ran. Results were negative.
So even if I didn't know the exact location where the hog was shot, it would have been covered by both search patterns.
I did not proceed with a grid search pattern after this and as might typically be employed at this point. The reason for not using the grid search pattern was because the previous semi-circular pattern would have likely destroyed or hidden any blood evidence that might have been missed. That is the problem with terrestrial searches, versus aerial searches that don't actually come in contact with the ground.
But all that is rather boring and so was not mentioned previously.
I don't doubt there was some blood splatter, but if there was, it was tiny mist particles and not larger droplets. There was no spurting of blood as the hog ran. There was no contact blood visible on the grass stalks. Everybody misses stuff, but I covered that area enough times that if it was present, I should have come across it. Really though, blood at the location of being shot is probably the least informative location. I pretty well know where the hog was shot. What I needed to know was the direction in which the hog ran once the hog was out of sight.
