Please pardon me if this has been done here before.
While having Apple Candy Cane do the "Caught In The Hunt" quest, I became curious about something. She talked to Kurdan gro-Dragol and exhausted his dialogue options. Seeing that he wasn't marked as "Essential", I wondered what might happen should she execute him then and there. So she did and the pop-up appeared with the usual message about a character essential to the quest having died.
She looted him, enchanted his gear to mark it as his, cast "Reanimated Helper" on him to get him outside where she then cast "Polymorph Sheep" on him. Then she Fast Traveled to "Scout's Lodge" (formerly known as "Cadlew Chapel"), looted two caskets before disabling them. Then she ran across the water to the island fort and looked for the relevant people. No one was there!
Then she tried to Fast Travel from there, but couldn't, so she ran back to the lodge and Fast Traveled from there. Then she found the wife and she was grieving as a widow, even though her husband had never spawned I guess. I saved it as "AppleKilledKurdan", just in case.
I intend to resume from the previous save so it has a happy ending, wherin the husband is there so that he can be resurrected and recruited.
But let this be a lesson to the new players! Killing the antagonist too early can have negative repercussions!
I recommend only doing it if you hate the quest and just want to end it fast.