Do Rabbit need Zones make downed animals despawn?

Twice now I have run into an issue where I am following a blood trail and it just ends at 1 final blood (0-25%) and a pile of droppings. beyond that is a rabbit need zone with nothing but a bunch of rabbit tracks. no matter how much I search I cant find the animal I was tracking even though it should be dead and there are no tracks within 100 meters around their last location. I was within 500m of the wounded animal at all times so the render distance shouldn't have been an issue. I have run into this same situation twice in the Layton lake district and bot trails went cold at rabbit feeding locations.

Sorry if this is a dumb question but I am relatively new to the game and it is frustrating to have animals seemingly vanish