EUSTIS – A hunter who had been pursuing deer in the Maine woods just a day earlier has used his boat to save a drowning buck from a freezing lake.

The Bangor Daily News reports that Justin Wyman saw the struggling buck in Flagstaff Lake in Eustis on Sunday. The six-point buck had fallen through thin ice and appeared to be about 300 yards from the shore.

Wyman offered his boat to game wardens to try to go save the buck. They got some rope around the buck’s antlers and took it back to a boat landing and eventually coaxed it to land.

Wyman says the buck rested a while and later took off into the woods.

Wyman is an avid deer hunter and spent the day hunting Saturday, the last day of the deer season.