Deer Avoid Drowning by Boarding Charter Boat

12/14/2011

I just learned about this odd and extraordinary wildlife rescue that happened in October in Alaska.  It's such an amazing story, I don't know why I didn't hear about it earlier.

According to the report in the Juneau Empire, Tom Satre, his sister Sharon Kelly and a few other family members were heading across Taku Inlet near Juneau on Tom's charter boat for a picnic at the State Marine Park. 

About a mile offshore, Sharon, a birder, spotted something odd in the water coming towards the boat through her binoculars.  What she first thought were sea lions or shorebirds turned out to be four young Sitka black-tailed deer (a subspecies of mule deer). 

Four distressed Sitka deer swim desperately towards the Alaska Quest Charter Boat.

Even though Sitka deer are known for their swimming ability and often cross large bodies of water between islands, these four where in obvious distress in the frigid water and whipping winds that had stirred up two to three foot swells in the inlet.  The biggest sign of that distress was the fact that the deer actually swam towards the boat and tried to board it, their fear of drowning overpowering their fear of people.

Unable to propel themselves out of the water in their exhaustion, they had to be hauled out onto the deck, where they collapsed.  There, the hypothermic deer slowly but calmly recovered.

The deer calmly recover on the deck of the boat after their near-drowning experience.

When the boat reached opposite shore, three of the four deer were able to make it off and into the woods on their own.  The fourth deer, however, had to be hauled off the boat in a wheelbarrow and couldn't stand on his own for a long while.  After a few hours, however, he managed to stay standing, albeit a bit wobbly, and the rescuers took their leave.

One deer was still weak when they reached the shore and had to be carried off the boat.

The whole incident was definitely not something Tom or Sharon could have ever anticipated when they set out across the inlet that morning.  Luckily for the deer, they were in the right place at the right time and were able to give these young animals another chance at life. 

Watch The Top 10 Animal Rescues from Animal Cops.

Adopt a Deer with the National Wildlife Federation.

Photos by Sharon Kelly.  Check out the Alaska Quest Charters website for more photos.  

Comments

[Karen HIckman]

What a great story.

[Beatriz Duran]

Very nice!!! How lucky were those deers!!! Maybe they are the Santa deers! :)

[Helene Monteil]

Wonderful connection between animals and human. Watch this video , it will make you feel very good.

[Deborah Morton-Glacken]

That was totally awesome! I'm so greatful that those wonderfull people were out their on the water.

[llb]

This happened in Oct 2010--old news

[Dave Barrow]

Fantastic , The captain and crew are credit to people who respect the help some animals need , well done u lovely people, It has shown me that there are still people who care , about our animals and there needs

[David Mizejewski]

@Ilb - If you read the post you'll see that in the first sentence I acknowledged that this event happened back in October. I didn't hear about it until this week, and judging by thousands of page views the post has already gotten, neither had a lot of other people.

Also, this blog is not a late-breaking news blog. It's a blog that explores odd things relating to animals, no matter when they happened.

[David]

Now THAT is a group of awesome humans. The deer? Well, goshdarnit, they weren't so smart, but they got another chance to learn something. Reckon they're awesome, too.

[Lindsay]

Lucky deer! They certainly must have been in a bad situation if they swam so eagerly towards the boat.

[The Green Phantom]

Wonderful Boat Captain and crew, to have the foresight and compassion of what needed to be done....

[Rasha]

Nice story...

[boby]

SANTA WENT DOWN AT SEA!!!! 0.0

[PVC Bending]

This is cool. It would have been great to be on that boat. Even if the deer would have normally been skittish, they looked pretty calm right there.

[deer meat is yummmy]

I would have put all of them right in my freezer:)

[Will]

Lol! So would my dad.

[jfred]

lol im a deer conservationist (deer hunter) i would have thought its a present from god lol

[Free India Classifieds]

those deers are cool

[Jenn]

Ech, there's always a couple of them isn't there. "Man make fire and hunt to prove manliness, animal for food only" BlahblahblahBLAH,lol! Butt out of the feel goodness. What a nice story :)

[Mollies mom]

It sure touches my heart to see these kinds of things.Bless all the people that helped these deer.

[Rajan Mishra]

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[Rajan Mishra]

A to Z

[Rajan Mishra]

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[Cuneyt]

Recently, it happened in the Turkey too. They jump to water while they escape from wolfs. One fisherman happened to hunted one with a fishing-net in the middle of the sea. She was still alive

[Dustin]

Cool story! But to the author, the Sitka black tail is a sub species of black tail deer, mule deer were the result of black tail bucks mating with white tail does. Also people, deer plural is still "deer" not "deers."

[David Mizejewski]

Thanks Dustin. I double checked with my colleague, Dr. Doug Inkley, National Wildlife Federation Senior Scientist, about the taxonomy of black tailed deer. Here was his reply:

"For a long time, black tailed deer have been considered a subspecies of mule deer, as you say (although mule deer probably evolved from the black tailed according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mule_deer#Taxonomy .

Also for a long time, mule deer and white-tailed deer have been considered separate species and as far as I know is still the case. I've seen no statements that the mule deer is a hybrid of the black tail and white tail.

I looked around the internet a little and can see from the Wikipedia site why someone might think this. The mitochondrial DNA of white-tailed deer and mule deer are similar, but black-tailed is different. Because mitochondrial DNA is passed on by the female in the egg but outside of the chromosomes, it would make sense that if a black-tailed buck and female white-tailed cross, the hybrid would have white-tailed mitochondrial DNA, as does the mule deer.

But it also appears that crosses are rare and don't do well.

I would try not to make it an issue because these are really hypotheses. Taxonomists can disagree."