Two people shot as deer? In a very few words, there is no excuse.
While I tend to agree for the most part, we do not know the whole story. From what I could find, they were shot with Buckshot, which means they were shot at close range. They also were shot by a member of their own hunting party, which means that hunter knew there were others near-by. I also have not been able to read anywhere confirming one way or the other about the wearing of blaze orange. Since it's not required on the private land they were hunting, it could be they were in camo. No statement about how many shots were taken either. Even with buckshot, it's hard to imaging one shot getting both of them at the range, and in the cover, they could have possibly been mistaken for deer. Just so much wrong here.
Very sad. Very sad indeed.
When I was young, deer drives were a very popular way to hunt deer after opening day. We had very explicit rules about where standers could shoot, and where the "drivers" would come thru. Done correctly, it was/is no more dangerous than any other form of hunting deer. Standers could not shoot into the drive, only once the deer got past them. Drivers could not shoot ahead or beside them, only once the deer got directly behind them. Still, on large tracts of public land, it was common for "drivers" to get lost or wander from their original path and come out somewhere other than where they were expected. Was hard thru the swamps and thickets for all the drivers to keep the same pace. Those folks that tended to shoot at the sound of brush cracking or movement were more often those folks that that they were "sneak' hunting than folks on stand during a drive. My family quit hunting with my aunt, uncle and cousins the day my cousin jumped and spun at the sound of my dad approaching him. The cousin pointed his loaded and off safety gun at my dad, who had come to assist him after my dad had heard several shots in the cousins direction. My cousin had a doe and her two fawns down, and did not have an antlerless tag. We always kinda guessed it was his practice to shoot now, look for horns later, but between the verification of it and the pointing of a loaded gun, my dad refused from that day on to hunt with them.
I crested a hill one day during Turkey season in full camo, only to look up and see a shotgun barrel pointed at me. I was supposed to be the only one hunting that farm that day at the hill top was a favorite mid-morning strut zone of the local Toms. Apparently the neighbor was aware of the strut zone too, but not aware he should ask permission first. He claimed the sound of me walking sounded like a strutting Tom and the top of my head coming over the hill looked like the tail-fan. Luckily I topped the hill just out of range.
Always a certain amount of risk when hunting. One thing that scared me when I introduced my kids to hunting and later in life when introducing my grand-kids. No different than athletics or riding dirtbike, one has to know the risk and accept them. You also have to make sure they have all the protection they need to reduce that risk to the smallest level possible. Ardent hunters are not always the safest, nor do they always follow the rules. Desperate folks do desperate things. I remember one day, my youngest son and I were turkey hunting on public land. We had heard a Tom in an area most of the morning, but could not get him to leave the area and come to us. So we decided to work our way to him. Realized he was calling from a logging road that led to a small flowage. Snuck down the road as far as we dared and then set up about 30 yards back in the brush. Worked the tom for a bout ten minutes when he just went silent. Soon heard a truck coming down the logging road(it was closed off to vehicle traffic) and as it drove by, I could see a guy in the front seat driving and a kid sittin' in the back seat with both windows down. Took m a while to realize what was going on, but once I did, I told my son we had to get out of there before we got shot. As we went back to the road, we heard the truck turn around and about the time we got to the road, the truck came back. Surprisingly the driver stopped and asked if we had seen "that Tom". Bragged about taking a nice Tom from the very spot we were standing a week before. Before I answered, I looked in the back and saw the boy with an uncased shotgun laying across his lap. The dad, noticing what I saw, began to tell me how badly he wanted his son to get a bird and admitted to driving around the road barricades and letting him illegally "road hunt", because this was the only day they had to hunt. He then asked me not to turn them in. That too, was very sad.
My hope is , that in the desperation of a last day hunt, the dad did not endanger his daughter like the dad in my story.