‘Pure joy’: Ohio woman captures moment mama deer plays with her fawns in river

UNIONTOWN, Ohio (WJW) — Carol Schell Letosky is no stranger to nature.

She’s from Copley, Ohio, where she was surrounded by wildlife like deer. Now, she lives with her husband, Ron, in Uniontown, Ohio, off the Tuscarawas River, where bald eagles abound.

But the morning of July 10, she saw something unusually magical.

“That morning, I was sitting outside drinking coffee with the camera, and the deer were playing,” said Letosky. So, she started snapping. “I didn’t know what I had until I processed them,” she said.

She’d spotted a mother and two fawns splashing and playing in the river with the morning sun shining on the water.

She shared her series of photos with the Facebook group Ohio Through A Lens. Her post got nearly 9,000 reactions — a record for any post on the page — with followers and photographers telling her she’d experienced a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity described as “amazing,” “awesome” and “beautiful.”

One commenter said, “Beautiful pictures showing us that animals, too, have moments of pure joy! Thank you so much for sharing. I love them!!”

Letosky said she isn’t even a professional photographer. She and her husband got into the hobby when the pandemic began.

“When COVID hit, we retired. We have a house along the river and decided to get a camera because we get bald eagles, deer, migrating birds,” she said. “We just started photographing.”

Her husband read up on photography and their camera.

“I said to my husband after 27 years, we finally found something we like to do together,” she said.