Question: I am looking at some c++/c code, the open source ovaldi project. I see that they include pcre.dll in the distribution and are making calls to functions in that library in the code; but they never load the dll; they just include the pcre.h header and seem to have access to the functions. Are they really just building with a static library and distributing pcre.dll on accident or is there a way to do this?

Answer: 
What do you mean they don't load the DLL? Not calling `LoadLibrary`? Probably are using an import table, the OS loader will load the DLL automatically.
The application itself can be built with linker indications to automatically find and load the DLL without needing to do so explicitly. True dynamic loading of DLLs is usually only needed when the question is which version of a DLL to load.