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Your post reminds of the time my friends and I took along a 4th compadre on a hunting trip. He was new and very impatient. My friends and I had 3 deer (one for each of us). All through the day we had given him the first shot, but he would get nervous and botch his shot. His trigger pull was inconsistent. We were his back-up and dropped the deer after he missed.

Late that evening we were heading back to the ranch house on a kaliche road about dusk. We stopped and saw a beautiful 8 pt. white tail about 60 yards away. We told him to take the shot if he wanted. It looked simple enough. He did alright...gut shot from 6o yards away. The deer ran off and we told him he had to track him down.

This guy said he thought he had missed and besides it was too dark and it was getting late he had to get home. It took everything I had to stop my friend (the ranch owner) from bleeding this guy out with his Long-knife (looked like a damn short sword). We gave him a maglite and walked to where we saw him shoot the deer. We put the light on the blood spots and told him to start humping...we were not leaving until he found his own damn deer. This was around 1900 hrs. He didn't find the deer until 0200 hrs. I guess we could have helped him, but he wouldn't have learned anything then. We didn't consider it a sport. It was just food. We prepared and ate everything we killed.

The only animal I ever gave up on was an elk in Pagosa Springs, Colorado.
A friend got excited when the bull elk suddenly appeared about twenty feet from where he was sitting (and if anyone thinks those huge animals can't sneak up on them, they just ain't been there!).
He wheeled and fired hitting the animal somewhere in the flank, as the signs showed later.
We tracked that animal all day, losing the blood trail a dozen times then picking it back up again.
We quit after dark and started again the next morning.
We finally lost the blood trail completely about noon and gave up.
This was a good five miles from where he was shot.
The thought of all that good meat lying out there bothered me, but up there nothing goes to waste. Either the bears or the varmints had a good feed.