I'm afraid time won't heal the villagers feelings in regards to non-returning companions, but this is not a bug either, it's just a way it is, and I'll move the thread at suggestions.
Adding mechanisms to tell the NPCs what really happened is tricky, and still even if the companions would die fairly I don't know if villagers still should always be like "He died when hunting with you? Ok, we don't mind that, here have a another hunting assistant, we wish him better luck than the previous. Hehe."
This is something to tweak/ponder in the future, but there's not an easy way to find a good consensus.