Ask these fishermen and they'll tell you: This was a once-in-a-lifetime catch.

Intent on some lobster, they instead hauled in a deer. A surprise, considering it was spotted in the water, five miles away from shore.

Shawn Dowling, Jared Thaxter and Ren Dorr were setting lobster traps off the coast of Harrington, Maine, on Monday when they spotted the deer, The Bangor Daily News reports. They couldn’t believe the animal had made it so far from land.

“I’m sure he [had been] going from island to island or shore to an island and he couldn’t see or got caught in the current,” Dorr told the paper. “He was just kind of going with the flow. He wasn’t trying to fight it or swim with it. He was just kind of floating along. There’s no way he made it that far on one tide.”

LONG ISLAND MAN SICCED ANGRY KIDS ON HUNTER: 'WHAT DID THE ... DEER DO TO YOU?'

While it was unclear how the deer had ended up in such a predicament, one thing was certain: They had to help.

“He was pretty beat out. I told my guys, ‘We gotta grab him,’” Dorr continued. “I didn’t really figure it out. [I just said]: ‘Throw him in the boat and we’re gonna take him to land.’ They kind of looked at me like I had 10 heads.”

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Dorr posted photos of the animal on his Facebook page with the caption: “Found this little guy 5 miles offshore today drifting farther away from land. Couldn’t let the poor guy suffer and drown so we brought him aboard and sailed him a half-hour to land and dropped him off on the beach! And sailed back out to haul!”

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