Six miles out to sea, Rob Kurdy and his buddies came across something odd. You won’t believe what it was.

When Rob Kurdy and his friends decided to go out on a fishing trip, they never could have imagined what they’d end up hauling back to shore. After all, this was the last thing you’d think of seeing six miles out to sea.

Like many guys, Kurdy and his buddies enjoy time out with the boys on fishing trips. And, on one particular trip in June 2016, they had planned on bringing home the motherload.

Yes, for this particular Saturday-afternoon excursion, Kurdy, his brother John and his two friends decided to go out shark fishing. Their spot for the adventure would be the Long Island Sound, a stretch of water between Long Island, New York and Connecticut.

If everything went well, then, the guys could bag themselves a great catch. And the sound does in fact host a clutch of shark species, including the blue, the mako and the hammerhead. But on this trip they’d be coming home with something very different.

When the guys were far out to sea, around six miles, they noticed something bobbing around in the water, and naturally they decided to take a closer look. And, with this being the 21st century and all, they would also film the whole encounter with their smartphones.

What they saw splashing about in the water, struggling to stay afloat, was a six-point buck. That’s right – almost six miles out to sea, the guys had come across a deer treading water.

“Well, this is pretty unbelievable,” says Courtland Brown, one of the guys on the boat, in cellphone footage shown on Fox News. “Here’s a freaking buck, swimming out in the Long Island Sound.”

“You could see it was shivering,” Rob Kurdy told News 8. “It was barely staying afloat, kind of just going in circles.” If something wasn’t done quickly, then, the animal would have surely drowned.

In the footage, the poor buck can be seen struggling in the cold water, and the guys soon came up with a plan to rescue it. It was ambitious, but if it worked they might be able to save the animal’s life.

Pulling up alongside the frightened deer, Kurdy and his buddies managed to tie a rope around the buck’s antlers. They slowly pulled the animal toward the boat, tied it to a cleat and headed back to shore.

Mind you, as bizarre as this may appear, swimming deer aren’t as unusual as you might think. Thanks to their hollow hairs, the animals are surprisingly buoyant and can usually hold their own in the water.

Unfortunately for this buck, though, it had gone way too far out of its depth. The guys towed it back to shore at a snail’s pace, which amounted to just two miles per hour. The last thing they wanted to do, of course, was alarm the animal any more than was necessary.

When they got close to Madison Beach, Connecticut, it quickly became clear that the freezing deer was totally out of energy and didn’t have the power to get itself to shore. So Kurdy donned a life jacket and jumped in the water.

Grabbing the exhausted animal, Kurdy swam it from the boat to the safety of the beach. It must have been challenging to handle an animal of that size in the water, but somehow Kurdy managed.

The lucky buck was safely on land, but it was soaked through and cold. Fortunately, nearby residents came down to the beach with blankets in an effort to warm up the animal.

It was taking a long time for the exhausted deer to regain its strength, and, despite the blankets, it was still freezing. That’s when Kurdy took things to the next level: he hugged the animal, using his own body heat to help warm it up.

Image: YouTube/WTNH News8 — Image: via YouTube/WTNH News8

Finally, after three tense hours on the sand, it looked as though the buck had pulled through. Struggling to its feet, the rejuvenated animal walked off unaided.

“It’s a life and I’m not going to let him drown,” Kurdy told WIVB News. “He was out in the middle of nowhere shivering and freezing. It was just the right thing to do.”

It must have been a weird moment for Kurdy and his friends when they pulled the animal out of the water, and it definitely wasn’t the kind of catch they were expecting from a relaxed, weekend fishing trip. But, fortunately for all involved, this amazing story had a happy ending.

“No one is going to believe this, but it’s a true fisherman story,” Kurdy said. And what a tale it is. So, next time you’re out on a boat and you see what could be a floating log, give it a second look – as you just never know…