Rescued or harvested? Was this a hunting dog? :=)
My thoughts exactly. The dog was thinking "LUNCH!"
The dog just rescued the deer, wanted to play with it, but did not hurt it.
Look at the video at the link to the article.
Ha! My brother had a yellow lab and we had a Norwegian elkhound. My brother shot a couple of quail and his dog did a beautiful job of retrieving them. He commented on how much smarter his dog was than Thumper the elkhound. After a while I looked back and saw Thumper with the head out one side of his mouth and feet out the other. I said “hey dad, Thumper is a lot smarter than Dennis’s dog. He knows what to do with quail. My brother wasn’t amused.