The animal was in the frigid water for about two hours before people were able to pull it out
Several people successfully rescued a deer from floating down the Bow River in southeast Calgary this weekend.
James Ford was among the four or five people that helped save the deer from the frigid water Saturday morning.
People out for a walk had asked one of Ford’s neighbours for rope.
“My neighbour knew I had a rope, so he phoned me, and then I jumped out. We all (came) into action,” Ford told a Postmedia photographer on scene.
“We pulled him out and he got out and jumped right back in unfortunately … in a weak spot,” he said.
“He was scared of us, I suppose, and went to the weaker of the directions he should have travelled,” said Ford.
Eventually after several attempts to rope the deer’s antlers, they were able to pull it out of the water along the river near Inglewood.
“The river does start to get quite deep. So we he was almost on the cusp of whether we’d be able to go out much further out there,” Ford said, adding that he saw the deer shivering after it was out of the water.
“I’ve never seen a deer shiver before,” he said, noting that the deer looked otherwise normal.
Ford believes the deer was likely in the water for about two hours.
Jill Boyd watched from the banks of the Bow River as her husband Bobby Vanonen helped the others rescue the deer.
“I think it’s pretty amazing. It’s kind of something that he would always do,” Boyd said after the incident.
She was a little worried Vanonen would fall through, but confident he had it under control.
Police had arrived at the scene earlier, and told everyone to stay off the ice and “they’d leave,” said Ford. They later went back out to save the deer.
— With files from Jim Wells