As usual, I find myself in the middle between two extremes. It seems to me what has to be weighed here is the law of the land and personal ethics. It’s not black and white to me.
If I were in the situation that the original post described, I would have talked with the landowner (husband) the first time this happened and asked him what I should do if it happens again. But, given the current situation, I would recover the deer, talk with the husband the first time I had a chance, and tell him what happened, and offer him a deer ham or something, if he seemed perturbed. It’s his and his wife’s land, and I think he has a right to know what people do on his land. I do have a question about why this has happened twice...is this a small parcel of land you hunt? If so, you might want to talk to the (husband) landowners in neighboring parcels about recovering your deer. I don’t hunt my sister’s land, even though there is a very nice 8 point buck that moves in daylight there, because it’s too small a parcel and the deer would probably end up expiring in someone’s front yard and I doubt their neighbors would like that.
Sometimes, doing the right thing means bearing the full consequences, including the legal consequences, of your actions. I believe in respecting property rights. Most people who own property either earned the money to pay for the land or else inherited it from their parents, who worked hard to earn the money to buy the land and pass it on to their children.
In this case, it seems that one of the property owners is OK with your retrieving your deer from his property, as long as his wife doesn’t find out. I would just talk with him to make sure that understanding is correct, as I described above. That said, I am not super anal about it, as long as there are no significant privacy rights being violated (walking along one side of a creek in the woods on a 100 acre parcel, even though the property sometimes crosses the creek a few feet, instead of walking through impenetrable underbrush, etc.) and no damage being done to the property.
BMRob: I just don’t know what to say. How old are you? 15? If you’re much older than that, then I find your lack of respect for property and other people disturbing.