My question to you Sheep hunter do you think more animals are lost due to poor shot or due to poor hunting skills?
I believe inexperience(weekend) archery hunters take poor shots (quatering, trying to punch it thru bush, etc....) which leads to the majority of the lost game. On top of that these hunters have not mastered the tracking ability that is needed to track arrowed game in early fall.
So would giving a more accurate weapon to people not willing to practise and understand the weapon lead to more recovered animals? The weekend hunters as we are calling them would have all the same issues, just more of them.

Using my self as an example I know of my experiences and my hunting partners and know that long days/night were due to poor tracking, poor tracking conditions, mystery poping up sticks!, etc....

On a side note, it would be interesting to actually know what the difference in recovered game is between the classes of weapons. Archery gets a bad rep but mainly due to the fact that a bow hunter knows at 20-30 yards he hits the animal. Most rifle guys don't at longer distances.
There was work done at a military base in the states that actually interviewed every hunter that came into the base. Both archery and rifle hunters and intustive aerial surveys after the seasons.
The results were actually quite surprising. I will look for that article and post later.