This guy put in quite an effort. The deer had to be pulled out of the river by canoe. Then carried into a heated cabin to warm up. They even made the buck a bed of hay.
And he probably will give it 5 minute head-start when he hunts it tomorrow. 
Would you be similarly about a beef rancher who rescued one of his steers? They don’t generally give the animals a head start at all.
Besides, this isn’t hunting season.
I’m a hunter, or used to be, and have spent a fair amount of time around ranchers and I don’t see those situations as entirely comparable. A rancher saves a steer because that’s his business. Not that ranchers are inherently heartless or anything, but watching over the herd and making sure it survives until it’s time to be slaughtered is how their job works. Not so much for hunters.
Which is what makes this weird as some sort of “feel good” story. The guy has been hunting for 38 years, let’s assume an average of 3 deer harvested per year, and that’s 100+ deer that he’s killed over the years. But this week he saved one, so, “Yay for him?” I mean I don’t have much problem with the hunting, or that he chose to save this one, or that he may take a shot at this deer once hunting season starts, but it is a strange gray area.
And a deer sort of is a hunter’s business, too. It might not be a full-time job, but all of the hunters I know do it, at least in part, to put food on the table. That buck might not personally be one the hunter shoots, but it’s still in a hunter’s best interest for the herd to thrive.
Yeah, sort of, though given the amount of deer overpopulation that exists in many places and the interference with natural selection, it’s arguable whether this was beneficial for the herd or not from a wildlife management perspective. Regardless, you’re kind of reinforcing my point that presenting this as an altruistic act is awkward. I personally think it’s more of a “duality of man” story. (Username checks out.)
With no natural predators we’re overrun with them. Between car accidents & deer ticks/lyme disease & living in an area without apex predators they are probably the biggest animal threat to humans around here. They are also devastating forested areas by overeating saplings.
I don’t want to see an animal suffer needlessly but one less buck might not be such a bad thing.
I also see him taking a canoe onto ice & wobble a bit getting unstuck. He doesn’t appear to be wearing cold weather immersion gear (ice suit, dry suit) or even a PFD; a couple more degrees of rocking that canoe & it may have been a very different story being reported.
“After brining the deer on to land, he allowed it to rest in a heated mini-cabin with some hay and a blanket.”
“When he next went to check on it at 4am, the animal had fled back into the wild.”
…after raiding the cabin’s fridge and taking all the beer.