Fighting Red Deer Stags Website

During the rutting season in Richmond Park I saw two of the larger stags parallel walking and eyeing each other up for a fight. Usually, fighting takes place when both animals feel evenly matched in size and strength as the antlers can cause serious injury. Often after a lot of posturing and bellowing they will part company peacefully. However, on this occasion they locked antlers and I was able to capture this image of the fight. Quite quickly the stag on the left emerged victorious chasing the other from its territory with only its pride injured!