The small buck killed the big buck this time. He did it by driving one of his antler tines through the eye socket and into the brain of his opponent.

Although he won the battle, the small buck would also soon be dead. His death would be even more dramatic than that of the big buck. It would happen in a way that you could not possibly imagine. His dead rival would be responsible. Only Mother Nature could create such a cruel and unusual fate.

It was mid November and the rut was at its peak. The two bucks were engaged in a struggle to determine who would have the right to mate. They fought to the death. They fought to see who would give life to the next generation. They fought not because they wanted to but because they had to. Wild animals are driven by instinct and controlled by a natural order over which they have no control. In this case, their bodies had an overwhelming urge to mate and they were both willing to die to satisfy that need.

As they fought, they lowered and smashed their heads together using their pointed antlers both as weapons and as shields to inflict and prevent injury. When the lethal blow was struck, the small buck tried to pull back and raise his head at the same time. As he did the antlers and the lives and the deaths of the two deer became locked together as one. For the small buck, it was the beginning of a living nightmare.

Already exhausted from the fight, he thrashed and shook and even lifted the body of his dead foe from the ground while trying to free himself. Though he could not, he kept trying. The whole time, the small buck could not move about or eat, or sleep, or rest, or see anything other than the bloodied face and the single dark protruding and still open eye of the dead deer that was inches away from his own two eyes.

The wilderness is always watching, especially from above. The wilderness is always listening even from far away. No matter which way the wind blows, other animals soon appear where there is an opportunity. And inside the wilderness, they don’t just come to look.

The crows arrived first and waited patiently in the upper branches of the surrounding trees. They knew their chance would come. High above, turkey vultures wheeled their silent circles in the open sky. Maybe that’s what attracted the coyotes. Eventually they found the two deer.

There were five coyotes. A pack. Even the coyotes had never seen anything like this. One remembered seeing a buck with his rack tangled in a barbed wire fence. For an instant, he could see the tufts hair that remained behind in the wire long after the buck had gone. That’s how the coyote learned that fences meant danger.

The small buck was alive and standing as the pack approached. His head was lowered to the ground from the dead weight of the other deer. Coyotes know little of mercy but in wild places like the woods surrounding the city of Kingston, they often provide a merciful end to the sick, weak, old, and helpless. But on this day they would not provide mercy to the small buck. It was the big buck they were interested in. He was the easier meal. They would eat him first.

 The five coyotes began to feast on the hindquarters of the big buck. As the small buck pulled the big buck by the locked antlers, the coyotes tore away large chunks of rotting flesh from the back legs. The small buck dug his hooves into the cool damp earth trying to back away. He dragged the corpse of the other deer over rocks and under pine boughs and through the woods to the edge of a tag alder swamp as the coyotes followed behind devouring its entrails.

The weight of the load on the neck and shoulders of the small buck was gradually diminishing as the body of the big deer slowly disappeared. The big buck had now become the smaller of the two deer. Over half his body was gone. But the small buck still could not free himself. He was far too exhausted to lift and run off with what remained of the carcass.

Eventually the crows descended on the scene. They landed on the ground and began pecking at pieces of the big buck’s flesh and guts and bits of bone and sinew that were strewn about and too small to be of interest to the coyotes.

The coyotes had eaten their way to within inches of the head of the small buck when a hunter heard the commotion from a distance. The crows and coyotes scattered when he came into sight. As he approached the small buck slumped to the ground on all fours still locked to the remains of the other deer.