Gripping Video Highlights Group of Hunters Rescuing Stranded Whitetail Deer From Frozen Lake
OutdoorHub Reporters 12.21.18
We’ve heard a lot of success stories from hunters about the deer they’ve taken this season, but a group of hunters from Pennsylvania may have topped them all with their efforts in rescuing a stranded eight-point buck from a frozen lake.
Trying to work quickly, Josh Davis and Ed Schmalzle put there heads together to come up with a solution. The deer was out quite a ways, and the ice was thin.
“I wouldn’t want to see the deer suffer,” Davis said according to WNEP. “I am a hunter. There’s a giant difference between an animal being harvested humanely and one being left out to die on the frozen ice.”
While Davis braved the thin ice, Jeff Sidle snapped photos and captured a gripping video of the rescue.
“I played a small part in the rescue of an 8 point buck that hand wondered out onto the ice of a local lake this morning, fell and couldn’t get up,” Jeff Sidle wrote on Facebook. “The video is a little long but worth the watch. There was over 100 yards distance between the shore and the deer. The guy in the boat did have a life jacket.”
The audio in the video may be compromised, but you can clearly see how the deer was struggling to get his footing out on the ice:
“Even with the boat distributing my weight, the boat was still cracking the ice up,” Davis recalled.
In the images Sidle captured, you can see the moment Davis finally reaches the buck, slips a lasso around him, and brings him back to shore:
Good work, gentlemen! It most certainly couldn’t have been an easy task, but thankfully you guys were there and dedicated to help out.
“People don’t realize that just because hunters go out and kill that they’re not humane or they don’t have those feelings about animals and the environment. That’s the way we are. It captured who we are,” Jeff said of his photos.
