FISHERMAN SHAUN CURNOW, 32
A helping hand for a deer in deep water

As he headed out at dawn last June off the coast of Cornwall, England, fisherman Shaun Curnow of the village of St. Keverne was hoping for a standard day's haul of 500 pounds of mackerel. Instead, as he scanned the sea a quarter-mile offshore, he spotted a disturbance in the water. "The gulls were really going in on something," says Curnow. "I could see this little brown blob. I thought it was a bit of driftwood at first."

But it wasn't. As Curnow pulled his 19-ft. fishing boat, the Bold Venture, toward the scene, he made out an object moving against the tide. "As soon as I saw the antlers, I knew what it was," he says. " 'That's a blinkin' deer!' " After several attempts to pull alongside the flailing animal, Curnow finally managed to grab hold of the exhausted creature and haul him over the side. "He was huffing and puffing and panting," says Curnow, who offered the deer a bit of a Kit Kat bar. "He kept looking at me, and he was a sad little thing." Onshore in 20 minutes, Curnow, who had radioed ahead, was met by local veterinarian David Cromey, who examined the winded but healthy 3-year-old male—which weighed in at 65 lbs.—and later released him into the nearby woods.

To date no one in St. Keverne, where few deer are ever seen, has been able to explain how the hapless animal wound up in the sea. But his rescue briefly made Curnow, a divorced father of two, a national celebrity. "They were all ready for big brown eyes and a story with a happy ending," says Cromey. "And that's what they got."