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I was actually elk hunting, and had passed on a cow at 30 yards because she was facing me head-on. As I descended the mountain I was hunting, making my way back to my vehicle, my knee blew out. I saw the small buck spook way ahead of me- but he was traveling the same direction I was headed. I still-hunted as carefully as I could (my painful knee made it easy to move slowly)and was within 100 yard of my truck when the deer jumped out of his bed about 40 yards from me. I don't think he knew what I was, because he came my direction to check me out. At 25 yards he passed behind a tree and I drew, I whistled to stop him and noticed my arrow had fallen from the rest. I let down my bow and he started to jog off, but I whistled again and he stopped broadside at 35, I squeezed off as carefuly as I could, and thought for sure I had double lunged him- but I heard my arrow crunch a stump. I watched him run off, tail down. I went to find my arrow, assuming a clean miss, but the arrow was bloody. Upon closer inspection I found stomach contents on it, and was very disheartened. It took me an hour to find blood- though it was quite profuse, it did not start for about the first 30 yards of the trail, and I was being slow and careful. Blood would become heavy, then dwindle to nothing. After about 300 yards I found where he had bedded,but no more blood, no more deer. after finding a few pin-drops of blood giving some idea of direction, my partner started sweeping out a bit while I concentated on finding more sign near the last blood. He called me over when he found another bloody bed- on my way over to him I very nearly stumbled on my deer in some long grass. Total time elapsed from the shot, about 3 hours. I was happy to find that he had three points on each side. He tasted great to the last drop, by the way.