In our conversation on the matter, he believed that such rare encounters might theoretically be more likely for non-typically racked bucks. Imagine two pitchforks, imagine them again with bent or dangled tines and you would think that locking up would be more likely for the non-typically racked bucks. With typical bucks naturally more common in the population and documented horn-locking fatalities such rare occurrences, we may never know the answer to that query.

Since horn-locking death is something you would never forget, the only other I vividly recalled was a 1930s photo from Pennsylvania. It came from the late Bob Latimer, a Game Commission employee who I had great fortune to know as a young conservation officer there in the mid-1970s.

Bob's 1938 photo of two (typical) locked-up Sullivan County, Pennsylvania, bucks was a popular fixture. Before he died, he personally published and mailed me a booklet simply titled Memories, including a full story of his encounter with the locked-antlered bucks, with the famous photo included.

Mr. Latimer's encounter was quite intimate, indeed. A party informed him that the big bucks were still alive, locked up and exhausted. By the time he and his crew reached the scene, one of the bucks was dead, its neck apparently broken by the other. The surviving buck was enraged, vicious and wide-eyed per Latimer.

When they tried to free it of its dead adversary's lock by sawing or shooting off the horns, they feared for their own safety. In testament to such November thick-necked and rut-crazed critters, I present you with Latimer's exact descriptions of the 1938 encounter.

"The hardhack was mauled around over quite an area. The buck still alive didn't seem to be weakened down at all. We had allowed the pointer, Rose, to go along with us, which was a mistake. The sight of the dog seemed to infuriate this buck even more than we did. His eyes seemed to glow green with hate and the hair on his mane stood straight up. When anyone of us would attempt to get very close to get a look, he would lunge toward us. Never realized that a deer could be so strong, but several times he threw the dead deer clear of the ground in his lunges and a couple of times the dead deer's hind feet were in the air as high as my head."

Latimer was a decent-sized man in the prime of his life with still enough time to join the military at age 41. Bob and his crew decided that for their own safety and to end the misery of the still yet alive buck, they dispatched it with a shot to the base of its neck.

He and his crew salvaged the capes and heads of the dead duo. They were mounted and displayed in the locked position at the state Game Commission headquarters in Harrisburg for a long time. Bob also indicated that both of the bucks had full paunches indicating they "had fed the night before, so they must have only become locked that morning."

It may be a bit of a stretch drawing too many conclusions over so few occurrences over such a long time span. However, if there is somewhat of a common denominator to these three documented death battles, it appears to be this one: The horn sizes, body and skeletal masses seem to be about even. That is, the bucks appear to have picked on someone their own size, albeit mighty dang big ones to boot!

Aside from the heavyweight-to-heavyweight business, another more certain conclusion can be drawn. Antlered deer can be very formidable and dangerous critters. Another buck turned on our farm dog, a large black Labrador named Amos, back in the 1960s. It nearly slit his hide in two along the rib flanks, which required scores of stitches.

If you ever get to see or hear the real rattling sounds of bucks battling for breeding rights, you might well remember this article. And yes, even more so, you may be witnessing another battle to the death!