The deer that was pulled from Mauch Chunk Lake Saturday afternoon was not able to survive.

Franklin Klock, naturalist at Carbon County Environmental Education Center, said two representatives from the Pennsylvania Game Commission were on scene when volunteers from the Summit Hill Fire Department went out on the ice to rescue the doe that had fallen through.

Klock immediately wrapped the deer in blankets so its body temperature could slowly return to normal.

The game commission deals with injured deer on a regular basis, as no rehabilitation centers take injured adult deer. When deer become frightened they come up fast and kicking, posing a danger of injuries to people.

Rescuers didn’t know how long the deer was in the water before it was rescued, but Klock said another deer had died in the water so they knew it had probably been there for a while.

This deer was “terrified” every time someone spoke or touched it.

“At one point it tried to get up,” Klock said.

As a result, the wildlife officers planned to move it to a sheltered area and check on it in two hours. They moved the deer out of the field to a wooded alcove, where it would hopefully recover without people interfering.

“We didn’t want to leave it exposed to the public. In the field if it did bolt there was a chance it would have ended up back in the water.”

In addition to hypothermia, officers had no way of knowing how much water the deer had taken in, which could have resulted in pneumonia.

“It wasn’t abandoned,” Klock stressed.

“We tried to let nature take its course. We were weighing all the options at the time.”

After two hours it was still alive, but officers knew it would not make it so they put it down. The deer was processed so it was not wasted.

“There was a plan,” Klock said. “But nobody felt good about the outcome.”