It was far from a normal catch for Scotty Domine and his fishing partner, Jason Langton, on Sunday.
What they spotted in the waters of Lake Erie had Jason pulling out his phone.
“Well you don’t see this everyday out on Lake Erie," he said on video as their boat approached a three-point buck struggling in the water.
“You always see stuff on the water, there’s balloons floating or this or that," said Domine. But never a deer. Until Sunday, that is.
The animal was some three miles off shore when the men extended a lifeline.
“We got up to it, threw a rope around it and got it around its neck," Domine said of the rescue attempt.
“He was struggling and trying to kick so we had to keep him close to the boat and just idle all the way in.”
The men had already landed their limit of perch and were headed back to Brest Bay Marina when they made the best catch and release of the day.
“When I knew he could touch bottom, we grabbed him by the head, near the antlers and got that rope off him," Domine. "He stood up and up off the bank and just wobbled along.”
It took the men over an hour to complete the rescue.
Langton wife posted two videos on the rescue on her Facebook page. One of them had over 45,000 views as of 5 p.m. on Tuesday. The other had been shared more than 500 times.
