Officers Detail Rescue Of 2 Bucks Who Were Stuck In The Mud

BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- Two deer trapped in mud in Anne Arundel County were pulled to safety on Saturday.

WJZ's Tracey Leong spoke with the Maryland Natural Resources Police officers about the difficult process of saving their lives.

It was an unusual call, they say, and they had to get creative to save the bucks.

"If you can imagine the suction around the deer, just trying to breath and that sort of thing, you know, obviously time is important," said DNR officer Brian Hunt.

He thinks the deer were already stuck for about three hours before he arrived on the scene in Deale.

The animals were exhausted, and scared.

"They would have died, so... they were lucky that the landscapers actually placed a call in to our comm center," Hunt said.

The rescue took more than two hours, with the officers using wooden boards to reach the deer and rope to finally pull them to safety.

"It took us probably, roughly an hour for each deer," said Officer Jacob Coxon, who believes the deer got spooked somehow and then ran into the muddy area. "They were actually pretty far from each other, so we kind of had to go at it separately, two different times. It was pretty much just, trying to go slow, we didn't want to spook the deer, we didn't want to get them tired any worse than what they were, we didn't want to hurt them by tying rope on them the wrong way."

"Ultimately, I mean, I just think it's the right thing to do," Coxon said. "You know, there's a lot of deer that, you know, get hit on the side of the road and stuff like that, so there's probably a lot of people that argue that 'What's a deer in Maryland, they're everywhere,' but, I mean, a life is a life to me," Coxon added.

"We do put down a lot of deer that are car struck and see a lot of... expired animals, so it's good that two made it," Hunt said. "We are here to conserve and protect, and that's an oath we took."

Once the deer were freed, they ran off into the woods together, the officers say.

DNR tells WJZ it's not uncommon for wild animals to get stuck in similar situations, and they urge the public to stay away and call police for help.

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