Teen hunter saves doe stranded in icy pond

DERBY, Vt. — A 19-year-old hunter switched roles when he rescued a deer stuck in an icy Vermont pond last week.

Griffin Marquis braved cold water and a skittish doe to save the frightened animal from Derby Pond, WCAX reported.

The teen was driving his truck home from work when he received a telephone call from his grandfather, Doug Spates, about a doe in distress.

“We were all just in shock. Like, whoa. None of us saw that coming,” Marquis said. “The deer was about a hundred yards out from shore.”

Marquis paddled a canoe out to the distressed animal, which had fallen through the ice and could not move.

“The deer was pretty shaken up. It didn’t have a whole lot of energy left,” he said.

Marquis tried several ways to either tow the doe or bring the animal into the canoe. He finally managed to get the doe into his vessel.

“It wasn’t really happy to be in there with me, but it made it in,” Marquis said. “And I sat with it about three minutes trying to calm it down to make it feel safe.”

Just when the rescue appeared to be a success, Marquis’ canoe crashed through more ice, startling the doe.

“She decided she was gonna jump out,” he said.

That caused the canoe to flip, sending doe and man into the water. Marquis was wearing a life jacket and was able to scramble back to shore.

“I went under, right up over my head,” he said. “Took the wind out of me, the breath out of me. It was fight mode to get out of there.”

There was still the issue of rescuing the deer, and Spates tried to talk his grandson out of it.

“I just said, ‘Griff, you know, I wanna save a deer. It’s not worth something happening.’ But you don’t say no to Griff,” he told WCAX. “He was pretty determined he was gonna save that deer.”

Marquis was not subtle on his second trip in the pond, grabbing the doe with one arm and dragging it by its scruff as he used a rake to paddle with his other arm.

When he got to shallow water, Marquis managed to get the anxious animal to shore. The doe was disoriented and nearly ran back into the water, but Marquis steered it to safety near some woods.

“It was a sigh of relief watching it walk away into the woods,” Marquis said.

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