When McHenry Township Fire Protection District crews left Pistakee Bay last week, the two young deer they’d just pulled from the water were recovering.

“We dried them off and laid them next to each other” on the shore, Lt. Patrick Ryan said. “We couldn’t wait until they had fully warmed up” as the crew needed to get back to quarters and be available for more calls.

From when a neighbor called about two deer struggling in the Chain O’ Lakes water to the time firefighters were dressed and on the ice was about 12 minutes, Ryan said. It was probably a total of 15 minutes from the call that the got the animals out of the water, he added.

“The deer were pretty exhausted. They let us grab them and pull them to the shore and got them off the ice,” Ryan said.

The water there is shallow – 4 or 5 feet deep – and the ice was no more than two inches thick. That allowed the firefighters to walk 100 or so feet into the bay, breaking ice as they went to pull the deer out.

Saving the deer is good training for cold water rescues of humans, Ryan said – something the district gets called in for on occasion.

“We get two or three calls a year. Some are unfounded and some area a legitimate emergency,” he said.

The young deer were probably born this spring, but they did not see a doe around. A neighbor did say they’d seen the two alone for most of the summer, Ryan said.