Last week, a group of ice-fishermen were happily pursuing their passion Wisconsin’s Green Bay (for you non-Wisconsinites, this is a body of water as well as a town that hosts a once-great football team) when a large tanker pushed up the bay. The ship was far enough distant that the fishermen never saw it, but the resulting wake carried under the ice and broke off a giant slab…the very one holding the ice-fishers. Thankfully no one was injured or drowned, and the party was rescued after many anxious moments floating about.


The prospects for this buck—riding a riverine ice flow somewhere equally cold—seem less cheery. Though the whitetail appears healthy at this stage of the voyage, what’s his next move? Wait until the slab rams into a larger, stouter one and skip to safety? Pitch out into the current and make a swim for shore? Whitetails are incredibly nimble on many surfaces, but ice is not one of them; every winter deer are rescued after wandering onto lakes or shelf ice and exhausting themselves trying to escape.

So what’s this buck to do? And does anyone know the origin of these pics?