‘THE DEER WHISPERER’
Alberta man performs roadside surgery to save dying doe’s baby
Sean Steele and his wife had been on the road for 10 hours, heading to Prince Rupert, B.C., for a fishing trip, when the truck in front of them struck a deer.
Steele instantly hopped out of his truck, knife in hand, thinking he would put the deer out of its misery.
“I didn’t want to see it suffer, so I got out and dragged it into the ditch,” he said.
That’s when he saw little hooves sticking out of the doe and realized a baby was on the way. By the time his wife, Michele, got out of the car, her husband was cradling a newborn fawn in his arms.
In the span of three minutes, Steele had performed an emergency caesarean section on the dying doe, saving her female fawn. Steele, an avid hunter and angler, brushed off the roadside surgery as “nothing.”
“Wasn’t a big deal,” he told the Star. “I really didn’t think nothing of it.”
Steele, 46, grew up on a cattle farm in Barrhead, Alta., where he still lives with his family, their three dogs and a few cows they keep as pets.
While both he and his wife have helped deliver baby animals before, they have always left the surgical deliveries to the veterinarians. But Steele’s instincts, honed during a lifetime in the bush, kicked in when he saw those tiny, emerging hooves.
“It was a pretty big miracle to see her come to,” Michele said of the fawn, who has been dubbed Friday for the day she was born.
Her husband, meanwhile, has been dubbed “the deer whisperer” — at least by her.
“I almost feel like it was fate for that poor deer,” Some things are not by accident,” she said.
The young fawn was lying dazed on the side of the road, working to get her wobbly legs under her and not realizing what had become of her mother until she was loaded into the back of the Steeles’ truck.
“She had life in her right away,” Steele said. “She started squirming around, and she did start calling for her mother when she was in my truck.”
After locating an animal sanctuary nearby in Smithers, B.C., the couple wrapped Friday in blankets and cradled her in a hot-pink basket in the back seat of their truck for the 30minute drive.
The orphaned fawn arrived in good health and perked right up when she got some milk.
In the days since, Friday has taken well to her formula and learned not to suckle on her roommate, a male fawn named Trooper, said Angelika Langen, founder of the Northern Lights Wildlife Society.
Steele said if he ever came across a suffering animal on the side of the road again, he’d do the same thing, no question — and so would any of his hunting friends.
Hunters, he said, are “probably the biggest conservationists” out there.
“We all have the same attitude,” Steele said. “People have to realize hunters aren’t out there to kill everything all the time.”