Baptiste Lake had only just frozen over last month, when a local contractor noticed a deer stranded out in the middle of the lake, near Belcast cottages.
Jeff Patterson of Bancroft Building says that just after his employee Luke Mittag got to work, they realized that the doe had gone through the newly-formed ice.
“We made a quick decision and I ran back home and got my floater suit and some ice picks and rope and Luke went out with the kayak…but the ice was too thick.”
Patterson said they initially thought they could try to help the deer by roping him and guiding him across the ice, but were unable capture him and the ice wasn’t reliable enough.
With only one kayak and floater suit, Patterson and Mittag decided it was best if one person remain on shore. They then got an axe and Luke went back out with the kayak.
“The ice, you couldn’t paddle through it. So he sat in the kayak and he kept chopping the ice in front of him until he had a trench all the way up to where the deer had fallen through. And then he guided the deer back through the trench to shore and off the deer went… He chopped for about two hours to get the deer out. He made that trench so that the deer could swim back to shore.”
Patterson says that the deer appeared to recover quickly when reaching the shore.
“It took her a few minutes, she stood there and just kind of got her bearings together for a minute, and then she bounded off into the bush.”
Patterson says it was hard to ‘put into words’ how special the experience was.
“Seeing animals that vulnerable doesn’t make you feel great, right? That’s what sort of pulls on your heartstrings and makes you do things you wouldn’t normally do.
“It’s not every day you get the opportunity to do something like that…It definitely left you feeling good that day.”
