While playing an archer character with maxed Archery, I recovered 4 arrows over 100 shots. Also it seems that arrows are sometimes ineffective, that is, shooting at a monster will simply have no result whatsoever: no damage, no floating text indicating it was blocked, etc. They're not being blocked by obstacles. It seems to happen when shooting at a monster that on his next turn will move laterally to the line of fire, especially when it's more than a couple tiles away.
>> I believe that ammo recovery only comes into play on the arrow that kills a monster. 4% is still far too few even assuming a 20% miss rate on those 100 shots.