This is the heartwarming moment a hunting guide rescued a stricken deer after it fell through river ice in rural Canada.
Marty Thomas, from Grand Forks, British Columbia, with the deer, which he put in a heated mini cabin wrapped in blankets to recover. The animal had vanished by the time he returned at 4am the next day
Footage filmed on February 28 shows Mr Thomas towing the deer through a channel in the ice
Mr Thomas said he went into action at around 4pm on February 28, when a friend alerted him to the deer’s plight.
‘I got a phone call that a deer had gone through the ice, so I got my wife, Marlene, and my grandson to go down to see.
‘And there was the deer, which had broken through the ice,’ Mr Thomas told Global News.
The young buck spent the night in a haystack carefully prepared by Mr and Mrs Thomas, before it made its departure
After wading through the waters, Mr Thomas lifted the deer and helped it on to shore before taking it in indoors to recover
‘We got the canoe to the bottom of an embankment and then we had to get the deer out of the canoe and then we had to drag him up the bank.’
Mr Thomas said the deer could barely move from the cold and was too exhausted to stand.
He guessed the deer to be around three years old and thought that it weighed around 150 pounds.