I have taken two different approaches to this same scenario. Last year with Conservation Officer permission (I work for the state) I ended it for a doe who had a broken hind leg and was caught in a very small patch of open water in an otherwise ice coveredriver. The reasonI did this is because I had already received numerous calls about her because she was in the middle of a state park, people concerned some hunter must have wounded her. For this reason I decided to off her. Instead of letting more and more people see her and more and more people come to the same "assumption." It was the right thing to do, legal, and savedface for sportsmen.

Had this same deer been in the woods, away from people, I would have let nature take its course. Its just the way things are meant to be.