I voted 1 in 20, which is closest to about 95% recovery. That's for me, my wife and my brother, who are the people I hunt with by far the most.
You know those people who say stuff like "there's two kinds of peole int his world..."? I love that. Well, I figure there's 2 kinds of people in this world.
1) The kind that either have a loss or a "could easily have been a loss", realize it's on them and make changes. Practice, dial back the shots they are willing to take, etc.
2) people who have a loss or a near loss and, out of hubris or ego or youth or peer pressure or whatever, dont change anything, or dont have the self-discipline to change anything consistently.
Bottom line, I think some of my ratio is just luck, becasue I have recovered some of the animals that could easily have been losses. Family or group culture certainly can play into this, as Taperpin says above^.
I bow hunted a lot as a kid. Not much success, but was really into it, shot 3d targets weekly from when I was about 10 after convincing my dad he "needed" to take me, etc. I stopped hunting for a few years during college and a few years after, and when I picked it up again in the late 90's I realized the area I live was better for bow hunting than gun. So I got out my dad's old 1970's Jennings bow, got a new set of arrows and the guy at the desk at Dick's sold me some 3-blade expandable broadheads. I shot a doe at 12 yards from a tree stand, and the arrow pretty much bounced out of the deer as it ran off, having penetrated less than 2" based on blood on the arrow. Tracked it with a dog tracker after I lost blood, never found it. That's on me for a likely poor shot (it's possible it hit a shoulder blade or larger bone although at the time I thought it was a good shot) and for having inappropriately mismatched equipment and not enough practice.
I replaced that bow with a modern compound and with both fixed and expandables have had good penetration since. However, I have been lucky...the next 2 deer I recovered, but I shot center mass (very rear of liver/guts, maybe 1 lung). 1 was an easy recover, it was down in 150 yards, but the hit was much farther back than I'd thought. The other we tracked alternating good and spotty blood for a long way, jumped it and found guts, left it. Came back early the next AM and it was dead 30 yards from where we jumped it. That one was a liver/gut shot, and again much farther back than I'd thought despite shooting it at 10 yards. I am counting both of those deer as recovered (both ate fine!), but the shots were both poor and could easily have been a loss if the dice landed just slightly differently. 2 points makes a line, right? Both of those experiences made me really analyze what I was doing, and on a firiends recommendation I switched to a single-pin sight which has helped a lot--I believe it was the multi-pins I was using that lead to me subconsciously having poor target focus when I was really amped-up, and ending up hitting center mass. Even though I could group well on targets, I was missing by miles even at much closer range. A concrete shot process might help too. But it really had me practicing a lot more and realizing that even though I was grooved on targets that is NOT the same as being grooved on deer. Looking back, this is a big part of why I think it's a good idea for a newer hunter to just shoot as many deer as they can, and forget about being picky about this buck or that buck until they have some experience shooting and killing numbers of animals under their belt.
A few years later I shot a deer that I hit in the spine, and lost it. It clearly heard the bow and ducked the string. That was just a hair over 30 yard shot, in practice I could put dozens of arrows in a row into a 4" circle at that range. Between that, and watching a bunch of slomo videos of whitetails jumping the string, I now limit my shots to 25 yards as a 100% hard rule, zero exceptions, because I just cant predict when they are going to jump and when they arent, so I've decided you just cannot expect your hit on a deer to land where you aim past 25 yards or so regardless of how good a shot you are, becasue it just takes too long for the arrow to get there. I have not lost an animal, and have been able to take at least one archery deer every year but one, since. I have also never lost a firearm deer or any other big game animal. Have had a couple poor shots that could have been lost that were a good wake-up call similar to above, but no actual losses.
My wife hit a ML deer in the brisket and leg, we tracked it with a dog for several miles until it jumped in a large river, and we could not pick up the track again.
That's all the losses and near-losses.
