Animal rescue stories have been the subject of several of our articles, particularly those involving deer in open water. But a story quite like this one has never before been told.

Imagine yourself on a small fishing boat out at sea and you notice someone struggling off in the distance. Even though you can see that it’s not a fish, you manage to catch it on one of your lines nonetheless!

After making the decision to reel it in, you realized you had truly trapped a deer. How on earth could a deer get there in the first place, in the midst of the ocean? We may never know, but the young buck is exceedingly fortunate to have been caught by fisherman Enrico Di Francesco.

About a mile off the Italian coast of Giulianova, Enrico Di Francesco’s little fishing boat captured the deer and reeled it into the boat.

A little port town in Italy called Giulianova is a well-known spot for fishing. Di Francesco initially mistook the deer for a tree trunk when he first saw it floating in the sea.

The fisherman knew there was only one thing he could do after saving a deer with his line. Of course he would catch it and save this helpless fellow.

After reeling the deer in, he made the decision to bring it back to shore and give it another shot at life because he was afraid it may drown. It was not an easy capture, he informed the local Italian media.

Such a story is my favorite! You can tell that the deer was really grateful for the rescue and perhaps very perplexed. In addition to ending up in the middle of the sea, it was also abruptly hauled in and then put on a boat.

It will undoubtedly be as content as a woodpecker in a lumber yard once its legs are planted firmly on the ground.