Possible a Bear didn't die from an Arrow?

[Undecided Name For Now]

Is it even possible for something to not die if it's hit by an arrow?
I hit a bear, I swear I saw the blood splash on Mystery Lake, near the Lone Cabin.
It ran and did so in a panicky way, but I swear it seemed like it was heading my direction too, just not directly.

Ran inside the Lone Cabin, slept for a few hours, came back out, saw it out near the middle of the lake, went back in and went between passing time and sleeping, woke up in the morning to find my arrow near the cabin on the lake, but no bear corpse.

Did the bear despawn? I would imagine bears are tough enough to shrug off an arrow that misses the mark but still hits it, (hind or leg, not sure which).

(In the end, after searching all over, I ended up coming across a nice wolf attacking deer bit and even bagged 2 rabbits another wolf recently took down, so I still got meat for my arrow, technically. 2 Full Rabbit and Deer Loot)

I'm confused. The arrow didn't look like it was in the same spot as where I shot the bear either.
Normally I take the arrow out of the corpse after taking the meat hides and gut off anything. But this arrow is just chilling on the lake.

(I'll also note here, I'm playing on the lowest difficulty, Pilgrim.)

[JiffyPopKids]

Sometimes arrows bounce off your target and get lost. other times when you're lucky you can find them.

But I just killed a bear yesterday and it only took two arrow shots.

I was at the poacher's camp in FM when a bear walked over. I climbed the tree that fell over on the cars and shot the bear once. I tracked it for 2-3 more game hours untill it got dark and I had to go back home. I slept the night away and I went to look for it again. I finally found it again but Still alive!? I climb a fallen tree and shoot my bow right at the bear's head. it makes it's last noise and falls over dead. I harvest it and take it all back to poacher's camp and cook it! >:P

I was on voyuager though, so not sure if that makes any diffrience.

[Lonelywolf]

We of course don't know the actual numbers, but for example, lets say a bear has 500 hp, and an arrow deals about 50 up front damage. Enough to kill a wolf in one hit, two for a deer, but it would take ten shots to kill the bear, at least in just up front damage. Now, the arrows do cause bleeding, and bleeding appears to stack from every test I've done. Given timing and patience, a bear can be killed by just one rifle round or just one arrow. It will take DAYS for a single arrow though, and almost a whole day for a single bullet, unless you are blessed with RNG and deal critical damage.

From my experience, it takes 1-2 arrows to kill a wolf, most commonly 1. For deer, it takes 2, unless RNG blesses me and I get a one shot, but those are rare. Bears take 8-10 shots if you want to kill it outright, but I'd say 2 is plenty if you can stand to wait.

These stats are all with arrows. I have no clue what this would be with the rifle.

[Zipristin]

Does it matter if you hit the bear in the head, in the torso, in the leg... ?

[Lonelywolf]

Head has greater chance for a critical hit, but other than that, no, it doesn't really matter. It still applies damage and still causes bleed out. Sometimes if the arrow breaks it doesn't apply bleed damage but this appeared to be a bug and has since been patched as far as I can tell. So no, it doesn't really matter, at least with the bow.

[Undecided Name For Now]

From what I understand, according to the wiki page, any hit will cause it to bleed out.
But from experience now, I've shot a deer and the arrow fell out shortly after and it just started walking again like nothing. No bleed out either.

Can you think of any good reason to use the hunting rifle on pilgrim? I would think bears, for a one shot, but I actually have a funny story about messing around with a bow and just save scumming to see if I could actually hit it while testing out the mechanics a year ago.
One shot the bear, with an arrow and when firing randomly towards it from a far distance. The literal 360 no scope of The Long Dark. I wish I was recording.