Y'all, I don't know anything about the AEL crash in Alabama besides what's in the media- three people went out at night, to find a somebody in the woods, and quickly found him. I've read that the search started at 0130, and at 0305, it was over, with the AEL crew dead. An aside- I've flown as part of a Gulf of Mexico multiple aircraft search that took 8 hours to find somebody less than a mile from their platform's location. The AEL crew did spectacularly well in a difficult task.
I've flown enough hunters out of the woods to understand the feeling of urgency when a solo hunter's missing. If you don't know anything except someone's not where they planned to be, that's all it is, a "feeling"- fear. That's a pretty skinny reason to put someone's life on the line.
The last night search I was party to resulted in: an arrest for false report; a search team finding a very cranky bear; and one rescuer being medevaced.
There's lots of things that can go wrong and not much opportunity for correction if you're low, slow, with nowhere to go, at night, distracted, holding a spotlight on a ground position, especially in a 206- LTE- some of the articles describe the helo as hovering before it crashed.