It is always good when shooter look through the shot and correctly call the hit. Among other signs found on the spot it helps wiht correctly timed pursuit.

Many hits need some time before you do the tracking – liver, kidney, guts... Those are all deadly and from trackers perspective nothing to write home about – i.e. with experienced dog it is just a matter of time to retrieve the quarry. Animal when hit, will quickly move out of the sight but usually not far – i.e. that far that it will fill secure and it will rest there. Hits described above need some time to “cook” (3 hours are usually enough). After that time if animal hasn’t died already it will be so sick that it wont be capable of rising anymore. However many times shooter rushes to the place where the game was hit and pursuit the blood trail up to where the animal has bedded down. Game will instantly relate the pain with the coming of the pursuer and make a flee in its last gasp – that will make tracking with dog later unnecessary harder and longer.

With modern ballistics capacity (powders, bullets…), use of optic sights, those above will result in short tracking. The most tracking in these days are more the following:

Grazing shots, shots hitting the front leg, snout…there is an urge to get experienced dog and tracker on the site as soon as possible. Those wounds are survivable in the short term (they cause a long term agony tho) and animal that was hit like, will usually not take any rest in the vicinity but go astray for some time. In the meantime there will be healthy tracks crossing the wounded one and the job will get the messier the later it will be conducted – at the end dog would have to approach the wounded animal and made it stand the ground. So all the work on the cold trail is like empty run up to the place where we will catch up with animal.