The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals: A Book of Personal Observations

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.