Seeing as most animals have the same and similar emotional range as humans, yes, many animals are on a similar level as humans. Should animals be treated with love and respect for the most part? Yes, very much so! When an animal, especially a prey animal, is disabled is not alright to torture the animal. There are two correct ways to go about dealing with a disabled animal. One way is to go totally out of your way to comfort him or her and spend countless amount of hours and money on materials to enable their lives again. The other way is the much more "cruel", but sensible option. This other way is simply mercy killing the disabled animal. A mercy kill is when you efficiently kill the animal as to minimize their physical pain and the animal dies quickly as well.

Now what happened in the OP's link's video is not a mercy kill whatsoever. I was able to determine this despite the full screen blurring of the video by CBS. However, I do not know if the buck in question was infected with that zombie deer prion disease. If so, the stupid people who were involved should be dealt with extremely harshly by the CDC via highest quarantine procedures. From what was clearly shown despite the full screen fuzzing the buck in question most likely got dealt with a "deathblow" by another buck sometime recently. This buck is disabled enough to be easily picked off by a pack of wolves and/or other strong predatory animals. This would mean and show the brutality of Nature. Nature isn't all beauty, after all. The other half of Nature is horrifying compared to it's beautiful side.

So yes, overall there is definitely cause for alarm for wanton abuse of this dying buck. It wouldn't of been bad if these stupid people had killed the buck via mercy kill and taken it's corpse for meat at least. What a tragedy this story is.