A STAG'S HORNS

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 86, 8 October 1930, Page 9

A STAG'S HORNS

HIS PRIDE, HIS FATE

A TARARUA TRAGEDY;

Horns —and even hair, according to Old Testament records—aro to a certain extent a danger to forest-resorting animals, in that it occasionally hapX>ens that these head-growths become involved in vegetation. Deer have been known to bo caught by their horns in trees, but such events are sufficiently rare in the- animal world to. give peculiar interest to a photograph, reproduced in this issue. It is a. photograph of tho head of a deer that was caught in supple-jacks in tho Tararua forest (Smith's Creek, Tauherenikau Valley), .hear where the Tararua Tramping Club's new hut lias been erected. Mr. J. H. Gibbs, who built the hut for the club, found in the bush the skeleton of the stag, with clear evidence that its horns had become so entagled with supple-jacks that it had been unable fo free itself, and had-starved to death. The- condition of the carcass (found by Mr. Gibbs in June) suggested that the accident -had happened to the stag (a sevenpointer) about March. It is supposed that the stag, fired with tho fighting spirit on the approach of the rutting season, and inclined to rub its horns on the surrounding vegetation, had become in this way involved with the springy supple-jack, vines of which reach down from overh-ead. Thus tEe rush of the beast along the ground would end, in a few feet, in. its_ being pulled by the vines into the air. In that way tho stag would become exhausted in its efforts to get free from i';j.flexible but unbreakable bonds, and would succumb. Probably in European forests its ancestors found no such' enemy as the supple-jack. If so, there may be less hereditary instinct to deal with situations of the kind.

As the photograph shows, Mr. Gibbs has retained with, the head sufficient supple-jack to toll its own story. This photograph was taken at Ms home in iiulgrave street, to which he brought the head from Smith's Creek. Some weeks after finding tlio trophy Mr. Gibbs also noticed in Smith's Creek'evidences that a stag had' become entangled about the same time in toi-toi. There : was a beaten "track where the stag had travelled round the toi-toi bush, in its efforts to ■break- away, and in this it had succedeed, leaving behind part of the ■twisted rope of toi-toi leaves from ■which it had struggled free. In this ■<:ase the toi-toi would not have the lifting effect of * the supple-jack, and •the beast, would bo able to continue -the fight with, its four feet on. mother «arth. Mr. Gdbbs states that stags when irubbing their horns prefer certain trees, such, as miro and tofara and matai. Miro, in particular, is attacked when the tree is sized anywhere from ,«.a inch, to a foot' in diameter; the bigger miros often show the marks of ihorns, and the smaller miros are- often killed. The colour of horns seems to .largely depend on the oil or resin in trees on whicli the horns" are rubbed. In supple-jack and matai country, horns are black. In the brown vbeeeh. country of , the South Island, 'horns are often brown; but where, in the' higher South Island country, con"tact is made with another shrub growing near the top of the bushlino (a 'iesinous and quickly burning shrub) it is.found that horns of deer have a pronounced reddish tinge.' Such horns are ''•much in evidence in the vicinity of .the Lewis-Pass, between Canterbury and tha valley of the Maruia.