open season badly wounded. But the deer is very hardy. Buck shot he does not mind if they do not strike a vital spot. So after a hard week of recuperation he was almost as good as new, full of fight and more wary than ever. He had learned much about his worst enemv, man, and it was to stand him in good stead in the future.
The next great event in his life was in the following autumn when he engaged in a deadly fight with his natural enemy a savage old buck who had dominated the Berkshires for several years. For an hour they had struggled in deadly antler play, striking and thrusting, advancing and retreating. Then their horns had been locked together as though with bands of steel. For three days they had thrashed and tugged, snorted and stamped, gnashed their teeth and foamed, tearing up the turf and streaking their sides with foam, but all to no effect. Then, at last, when there had been great danger that they would both die of slow starvation the older buck's horn on one side had broken and the combatants were free. For
