I have had some close calls over the years during rifle deer season here in PA., but three of them stand out in my memory, and are all associated with organized driving of deer. I am all for banning organized driving on public ground in PA, and this is why:
1) while hunting on a mountain top bench about 23 years ago another gang of hunters proceeded to drive through the public ground that I was hunting on. The last man on their drive was skirting the top edge of the bench that I was standing on. About a dozen deer came down on the bench and tried to sneak around the driver and get back in behind him, but he spotted them and started blazing away. I had my sights on a nice big doe and was about to drop her when a rifle bullet hit the tree I was leaning against at eye level and about 10 " away from my face. It blew bark and dirt into my eyeball and even some bullet shrapnel into my ear and cheek. The idiot driver came running down off of the benchtop and started looking for blood, compeltely ignoring me laying in the leaves, thrashing like a banked brookie, and trying to get the crap out of my eye. It got ugly, and when I gained my composure I worked him and his gun over pretty good!
2) Two years earlier a gang of local fellas from the area where I grew up got together in doe season to put on some meat drives. We were driving a very thick, previously selectively cut hollow out into a patch of open hardwoods. It was a very productive drive on the first day of the season for many years. Well, I was the end driver on this one, and when we were about half way through the drive I heard a shot from our watchers. We always set the watchers up so they weren' t firing back at the drivers when the deer came through. And not more than a minute later I hear what sounds like a bottle rocket coming through the woods, cracking and popping hemlock limbs, and a split second later I hear the low report of a longgun. Two or three small hemlock limbs slowly drop and swing back and forth on strips of bark not more than a foot above my head! Turns out another fella snuck in on our drive and was shooting at the deer right in line with our drivers with a 12 gauge slug gun.
3) Two years ago nov. I set my tree climber up in a VERY tall red oak overlooking an old selective cut on a mountaintop. About an hour after I got settled in I saw a few deer milling around about one hundred yards to my right in a little clearing, and not long after that I heard shots, and the crack and snapping of rifle bullets whizzing through the underbrush at the base of my tree. A few minutes later I saw a line of hunters coming in my direction, attempting to drive off the clearing. One of the men spotted me in the tree and yelled over to one of his mates, and the other fella cursed and turned around and walked back the way he had come. The others continued on and when they passed out of sight, I decided to call it a day for this spot and got down. In the process of taking my climber off of the tree I discovered a fresh bullet hole in the trunk of my tree about navel level, and right where I stood when I put the climber on! An hour earlier and I would have been in a world of hurt!
I have been shot three times with a shotgun here in PA, and once drew blood and had me digging shot out of my scalp! Two times in spring turkey season, and once in small game season while rabbit hunting with some friends.
Two of the local fellas where I grew up got shot with rifles during the deer season, and both survived, but one of them had many medical problems for many years after.