The three photos above are screen-shots from a Facebook clip posted by Jim Ellsworth, a cattle rancher in eastern South Dakota.
As Jim was out checking cattle in his pickup, he spooked a big whitetail buck that was bedded near a river, and as you’ll see, the buck had locked his antlers with another buck. Whitetail bucks often fight during the rut for a doe-in-heat, and in this case, the bucks couldn’t separate. To make matters worse, coyotes must have then arrived on the scene, killing one buck and eating most of it.
Just think about that — the living buck had to protect himself from coyotes while they were devouring his opponent. Crazy. Somehow he lived through that ordeal, and that takes us to the scenes shown in the video.
The surviving buck attempts to flee across a fast-flowing river, which is freezing along the sides. When the buck hits the open water, it’s deep, and he’s unable to get on top of the ice along the opposite shore. He struggles for at least a minute before Jim can carefully walk out on the ice to grab the buck’s rack. If Jim hadn’t been there to pull the buck to shore, it almost certainly would have drowned (or died from hypothermia) because it couldn’t exit the freezing water.
Thankfully, Jim is carrying a multitool that has a saw blade, and he’s able to cut an antler tine to free the living buck from the dead one.
Click here to watch the Facebook video, and be sure to turn up the volume to hear the conversation during the rescue mission.
Well done, Jim!
