Deliverance : question re: drew and john voights killing

can never figure out how drew diedwas he shot? Also the hillbilly that jon voight killed was he one of the hillbillys that was involved in ned beatty's attack?

We don't know, except that Lewis seemed pretty certain that he was.
Yes he was the one who ran away.
What I can't figure is why he bothered lowering the HB body with the rope.
Why not just roll him off ?

I'm sorry baby, I had to crash that Honda.

If he just threw the body off the cliff into the river, there was too much chance it would end up getting washed downstream and be discovered. He wanted to keep control of the body so it could be weighted down and stay put, where it would end up at the bottom of the lake after the river was dammed, never to be found.

No it wasn't the same hill billy, he looked
Nothing like him - you can see the shock on Voight's face when he sees him up close and realises it wasn't him.

Ed is shocked at first because the hillbilly had teeth, so he thinks he killed the wrong man. He then reached into the mouth and discovered that the hillbilly had a partial. It's a clue that Ed got the right one.

Might still be debatable, though.

Was Drew shot? Was Jon Voigt's hillbilly the correct one?

These are the two main mysteries of Deliverance, and they remain ambiguous. The book has it this way too, with uncertainty.

I used to HATE both of those lingering questionslike why couldn't the writer James Dickey just tell us what really happened. But now I realize, it is much more realistic to keep it vague, because in life you don't always get answers.

Lewis was the alpha male who always had to be right. He was still trying to convince the others that the remaining hillbilly (and his possible kin) was dangerous. So it makes sense for Lewis to simply say Drew was shot. This means the danger was real and they were correct for getting out of there. Lewis instantly saying Drew was show is his way of saying I told you so. He was not positive that Drew was shot, but he spoke it so confidently, the others bought into it.

As for Ed's mountain man, the main clue we have that it's the right guy is that only one actor is listed in the credits. But if it was the same guy, he woulda had to have followed the 2 canoes somehow, then crossed over the river (the rape occurred on the right bank, and he got shot on the left bank). Pretty far fetched.

Some simply say that the dead man had false teeth up front, so it had to be the same guy. But if so, why would he not wear his teeth one day and then put them in the next. A toothless hillbilly suddenly caring about his dental hygeine before going out to hunt 4 humans? Seems illogical.

In the book, the dude's face is torn to shreds and no way to identify if it was the right man. Still a mystery.

Incidentally, I always found this interesting.In the movie, the survivors lie about WHERE the accident occurred, and the cops become suspicious based on where they found the broken canoe. In the book, it was WHEN they found the canoe. The men lied about when the accident took place, and Queen knew they lied because the broken canoe already went downstream and arrived in Aintry before the survivors did.