Michigan brothers rescue deer from frozen lake

AccuWeather

Jeff Lipple talks to AccuWeather about what it was like coming to the rescue of a deer that was stranded in freezing water.

Transcript

00:00You've maybe seen this video here on our social media. It was two brothers in the upper peninsula

00:03of Michigan. They saw a deer had fallen through the ice and they jumped into action.

00:08One of the brothers, Jeff Lippel, is here to share the story. And Jeff,

00:12thanks so much for joining us here this morning. You bet. Thank you.

00:19All right. So how did you learn that the deer was in distress? And then what did you do first?

00:23What kind of instinct did you have? Well, my wife, Christine, noticed it.

00:27We live on the water up in the upper peninsula on Lake Huron. And she noticed some commotion

00:34out on the ice. And unfortunately, a deer had fallen through the ice and

00:36she saw it struggling. So we knew we had to do something to help it out.

00:40Well, let's talk about the methods of trying to get the deer out. What methods did you

00:46use to get the deer out? And what safety precautions did you take?

00:51Yeah, so I wore stuff that was flotation devices. So if I were to fall through,

00:56I'd at least be floating out there in the cold water. But we also took things like ice picks

01:01out, whereas if you were to fall in, you'd have an ice pick to kind of pull yourself up out on the

01:04ice and ropes. And what we wanted to do is hopefully kind of do a lasso, get the rope

01:11over the deer to be able to assist it and pull it out, because she was making a good effort and

01:14she'd kind of scramble and get her feet up on the ice there, but just didn't have enough to

01:20pull herself out. In the video there, you can see my brother, Greg, who's a charter

01:26captain and a licensed captain. We spend a lot of our life out on the water, so we always have

01:29emergency protocols in place and want to be really careful on the ice, especially this time of the

01:34year where it can be thin. So he hopped in the kayak and kind of corralled her over to one side

01:38where I could get a rope around her. So that was the final solution, right?

01:43Talk a little bit more about how you were able to lift the deer out of the open water and then

01:48onto the ice. Yeah, so obviously she was kind of in distress and she let me get close, but she

01:55didn't want me to touch her or put anything over her. So not until my brother was able to get up

02:00next to her and kind of coax her to an area where we could gently put something around her to help

02:04her pull her out. The tricky part was that it was slippery ice, so as much as I was trying to pull,

02:09my feet were also slipping out from underneath me a little bit. So it was just a slow and steady,

02:15kind of keep on scooting her forward, and the more she could kind of get up onto the ice and

02:18the more I could kind of make a little progress with her. We just kind of tried to do it gently,

02:22but tried to keep her moving so that she could kind of keep that momentum to get all of her

02:26weight up and out of the water and onto the ice where she could get her footing underneath there.

02:30Two last questions for you. One's easy, one might be a little difficult, but

02:34number one, what was it like seeing the deer get into its feet and get away? And two,

02:41do you get a sense that the deer knew that you were trying to help it?

02:48Yeah, I mean, it was a great feeling. I mean, my brother both kind of were cheering and high-fiving

02:52because you just feel really bad and never want to see anything struggling like that. So it was a

02:57great feeling to see her get up on her feet and shake it off and see that all her legs were good

03:01and she looked strong and healthy and appreciative as she went back onto the ice. Because it's funny,

03:05she has a natural instinct for a deer to be running away from humans, but you saw in the

03:11video, she would swim right over to me because I think she just didn't know what else to do. So

03:15seeing that she didn't know what else to do and was appreciative of us, and it was really nice

03:19to see that she seemed to be strong and healthy and should be doing fine today as well.

03:25Talk about a feel-good Friday story. You're giving the definition of Midwest nice. Just

03:29you can see that you guys are just so in tune with nature, of course, where you live. And I'm

03:33sure this has not been the first time, and likely not the last time, and you look like you had all

03:37the equipment to help save the deer. So we appreciate you sharing your story. Jeff Lippold,

03:40thanks again for joining us here on AccuOther Early. Thank you. Have a great day. And you have

03:44a great holiday. Enjoy. That's a good person. Such a good person. Yeah, you can really tell

03:51how people are by the way they treat animals.

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