This startling combat lasted a surprisingly long time, without noticeable advantage to either side. Finally the tigers backed away from each other, and when at a safe distance apart dropped their front feet to the floor, growling savagely and licking their lips wherever a claw had drawn blood.
Of all the wild animals that are preyed upon by lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars, and pumas, only half a dozen species do anything more than struggle to escape. The gaur and the wild buffalo of India are sufficiently vindictive in dealing with a human hunter whose aim is not straight, but both fly before the tiger, and count themselves lucky when they can escape with nothing worse to show than a collection of long slits on their sides and hind quarters made by his knife-like claws. They do not care to return to do battle for the sake of revenge, and seek to put the widest possible stretch of jungle between themselves and their dreaded enemy.
The same is true of the African buffalo and the lion. As to the antelopes of Africa and the deer of India, what can they do but make a desperate effort to escape, and fly like the wind whenever they succeed? Of course many of these defenseless animals make a gallant struggle for their lives, and not a few succeed in throwing off their assailants and escaping. Even domestic cattle sometimes return to the hill country villages of southern India bearing claw marks on their sides—usually the work of young tigers, or of rheumatic old ones.
Here is a deer and puma story. In the picturesque bad-lands of Hell Creek, Montana, I saw my comrade, Laton A. Huffman, kill a large mule deer buck that three months previously had been attacked by a puma. From above it, the great cat had leaped upon the back of the deer, and laid hold with teeth and claws. In its struggle for life the buck either leaped or fell off the edge of a perpendicular "cut bank," and landed upon its back, with the puma underneath. Evidently the puma was so seriously injured that it could not continue the struggle; but it surely left its ear-marks.
One ear of the buck was fearfully torn. There was a big wound on the top of the neck, where the puma jaws had lacerated the skin and flesh; and both hind legs had been badly clawed by the assailant's hind feet. The main beam of the right antler had been, broken off half-way up, while the antlers were still in the velvet, which enabled us to fix the probable date of the encounter.
In the great Wynaad forest I once got lost, and in toiling through a five acre patch of grass higher than my head, and so dense that it was not negotiable except by following the game trails, my simple old Kuramber and I came suddenly upon the scene of a great struggle. In the center of a space about twenty feet in diameter, on which the tall grass had been trampled flat, lay the remains of a sambar stag which had very recently been killed and eaten by a tiger. The neck had not been dislocated, and the sambar had fought long and hard. Evidently the tiger had lain in wait on the runway, and had failed to subdue the sambar by his first fierce onslaught. Now an angry stag with good antlers is no mean antagonist, and it is strange if the tiger in the case went through that struggle without a puncture in his tawny skin.
In South Africa, Vaughan Kirby once found the dead bodies of a "patriarchal bull" sable antelope and a lion, "which had evidently been a fine specimen," lying close together, where the two animals had fallen after a great struggle. The sable antelope must have killed its antagonist by a lucky backward thrust of its long, curved horns as the lion fastened upon its back to pull it down.
Mr. Kirby's dogs once disturbed a sanguinary struggle between a leopard and a wild boar, or "bush pig," which had well-nigh reached a finish. The old boar, when bayed by the dogs, was found to be most terribly mauled. Its tough skin hung literally in shreds from its neck and shoulders, presenting ghastly open wounds. The entrails protruded from a deep claw gash in the side, and the head was a mass of blood and dirt. "On searching around," says Mr. Kirby, "we found unmistakable evidence of a life and death struggle. The ground was covered with gouts of blood and yellow hair, to some of which the skin (of the leopard) was still attached. Blood was splashed plentifully on the tree stems and the low brushwood, which for a space of a dozen yards around was trampled flat." The leopard had fled upon the approach of the dogs, leaving a trail of blood, which, though followed quickly, was finally lost in bad ground. It is no wonder that from the above and many other evidences equally good, Mr. Kirby considers the bush pig a remarkably courageous animal. He says that it was "never yet known to show the white feather," and declares that "a pig is never defeated until he is dead."
The Combats of Male Deer. The sable antelope is one of the few exceptions to the well-nigh universal rule against fighting between wild animals of the same species. Of this species, Mr. Kirby says: "Sable antelope bulls fight most fiercely amongst themselves, and though I have never actually witnessed an encounter between them, I have often seen the results of such, evidenced by great gaping wounds that could have been made by nothing else than the horns of an opponent. I once killed a large bull with a piece of another's horn tip, fully three inches long, buried in its neck. In 1889 I shot an old bull on the Swinya with a terrible wound in its off shoulder, caused by a horn thrust."
During the jealous flashes of the mating season, the males of several species of deer fight savagely. After a long period of inaction while the new antlers are developing—from April to September—the beginning of October finds the male deer, elk, or moose of North America with a new suit of hair, new horns, a swollen neck, and all his usual assertiveness. The crisp autumn air promotes a disposition to fight something, precisely as it inspires a sportsman to "kill something." During October and November, particularly, it is well for an unarmed man to give every antlered deer a wide berth.