As he drove around the lake just after 12:30 p.m., Mike Buzzo noticed something moving on the ice.

Or, more properly, in the water, head, shoulders and back just visible.

A deer had fallen through and now was swimming from edge to edge, trying again and again to find a foothold back up.

Buzzo pulled over at the curve where the road reaches the lake and got out his phone. But calls to the Department of Natural Resources offices got no answer. The 911 dispatcher advised that they “let nature take its course” when it comes to such situations with wildlife, Buzzo said.

Betsy Bloom/Daily News photos

A woman walking past told him she’d seen the deer in the water at least a half-hour earlier. Another lake resident stopped to view the situation, suggesting perhaps sending out a boat, but one was not readily available. Buzzo considered fetching his canoe but wasn’t sure that would be enough to help the deer.

So they watched from afar, verbally and mentally trying to urge the animal to work itself out of its predicament, worried the cold and constant swimming would eventually take its toll and the head would slip under.

As if to stress how grim things looked, two bald eagles circled overhead, one landing on the ice as if just waiting for its chance.

That any deer would risk venturing out on the tattered ice is a mystery. Six Mile Lake has more open water at this point in March than I can remember in the nine years I’ve been up here.

I remarked — not seriously — when I got to the site that perhaps it was better if this individual got culled out of the gene pool.

Onlookers worried that constant swimming would eventually take its toll.

Luckily, that didn’t happen. After repeatedly getting its front hooves on the ice only to have it give way, the deer figured out it could thrash out a route, using its legs and then body to cut a path to open water.

It leisurely swam alongside the shore until it reached a spot to climb out, moving stiffly — understandable, given it had spent at least 90 minutes in icy waters — but otherwise looking none the worse for the ordeal.

A North Dickinson County grad, Buzzo had spent 36 years in downstate Michigan working at wastewater treatment plants before returning here in December 2022. He’s retired now, getting to enjoy again seeing all the wildlife the area has to offer.

But Friday had the potential for something he didn’t really want to see. The outcome left him “relieved,” he said.

“I thought I’d watch a deer die, and it didn’t,” he said. “It made for an exciting day.”

Betsy Bloom Daily News photos

Betsy Bloom can be reached at 906-774-2772, ext. 240, or bbloom@ironmountaindailynews.com.