The problem with fishing is that, at best, you come back with fish. Imagine how much more popular the sport would be if people came back with deer instead. Such was the case for Alaska Quest Charters captain Tom Satre when he took his family out for a cruise and came back with four exhausted deer. Captain Tom Satre”We were were crossing the inlet on the way to Taku Harbor and we came across the deer and they were swimming. They looked exhausted,” Satre tells Seattle Weekly by phone, hours before getting on a plane to Seattle. “I went to the swim step and pulled them up with one of the lines. I had a lot of trepidation about how am I going to get them up without hurting the deer, but I thought ‘hey, they do this all the time to calves at rodeos,’ so I pulled them up on the swim step and then they just collapsed from exhaustion.”After rescuing the deer, Satre says he took the boat back to the dock. One deer jumped onto the dock and took off immediately; two others had to be coaxed off the boat; and the largest deer had to be loaded up into a wheelbarrow and wheeled off the dock before it finally stood up and stumbled into the woods. Here are a few of the ridiculous photos.The incident actually happened more than a year ago, and the photos were apparently circulated here and there. But this week, Elma, Wash. nonprofit Second Chance Ranch posted the pics, and now they’re going viral. Satre says that he’s seen deer swimming numerous times before, but in this case the animals had obviously picked a destination that was a bit too ambitious. “These were young bucks, and someone made a bad decision to swim to the other side, Satre says with a chuckle. “It’s like putting four teenagers in the car. It was a great feeling being able to help them.”Follow The Daily Weekly on Facebook and Twitter.