Seems like deer-drive horror stories are every bit as common up there as down here. We will see a bunch of guys shot in the first two weeks of December. Also every one of them will be on deer drives. That is the normal mode of deer hunting here, and it pays little respect to property lines or safety to participants or bystanders.
Like all of you, I have my deer drive story. Only I was lying on my back on a mudbar in the Des Moines river while duck hunting. I walked up the bar after chasing down a wayward decoy and watched guys across the river in orange converging from up and downstream. The ones along the bank saw me for sure so they knew we were over there (~150 yds away at that point).
Got back to my position and sat down when the guy upstream started shooting and I saw the first slug hit water in the middle of the river out in front of us. Then I saw the buck that was trying to make it to our side. The guy kept shooting and the buck kept coming attempting to reach land right above us. The second shot hit water on the outer edge of the dekes. The third it in the middle of the dekes, and by the time the fourth was on the way, I was hunkered as flat as I could get. That slug and one more hit mud somewhere really really close.
The deer died and floated away downstream with no attempt to recover it.
