Two RCMP officers delivered a baby deer on the side of a road early Saturday morning after accidentally killing its mother.

Const. Derek Bigger and Aux. Const. Darren Forsyth were patrolling a rural road in Meaghers Grant, N.S., at about 2:30 a.m. when a deer ran in front of their police truck.

"Fog had set in," Bigger, who was driving, told Postmedia Network in a telephone interview on Saturday. By the time he saw the deer, she was in a "full sprint" and he didn’t even have time to hit the brakes, he said.

Bigger and Forsyth stopped the truck and went back to check on the deer, but she was dead.

"That’s when we saw the (amniotic) sac was outside of the deer," Bigger said, and realized she had been about to give birth.

"The fawn inside started to kick," Bigger said. "(I thought) if I don’t get that fawn out of that sac it’s definitely going to die."

Forsyth held the flashlight while Bigger used a pocket knife to gingerly cut the amniotic sac.

Bigger feared the odds were against the fawn surviving, he said, but "its eyes popped open" and it started breathing.

"Wow. That deer just survived that collision," the constable remembered thinking.

They put the baby deer in a blanket and Forsyth sat in the back with it as Bigger drove more than 60 km to Hope for Wildlife, a sanctuary for injured and orphaned wild animals.

During what felt like a long drive, the fawn "basically laid in that blanket and looked around," Bigger said.

After arriving at the sanctuary, Bigger and Forsyth watched as staff examined the fawn and found a small scrape on his back legs.

Late Saturday afternoon, the two returned to Hope for Wildlife to check on him.

"He got out of the pen and walked out," Bigger said. "To see him now, it’s awesome."

The fawn has been named "DD" — for Derek and Darren — the first names of the two officers.