This shocking picture shows a stag carrying the dismembered head of a rival buck in its antlers.
The image was captured by Jim Brown on his Cuddyback trail camera in the woods of North Dakota.
Mr Brown said he had pictures of the two animals both alive last year, but one day the buck’s head was hanging from his sparring foe’s antlers.
Mr Brown said: ‘I believe I had both of those bucks alive in one (earlier) picture.
‘Then all of a sudden that one, that’s how he showed up. I didn’t see him as he was dragging the body around. I only ever saw him with what was left of the other one.’
Jim Brown captured the image on the December 21 last year, with the stag’s death visibly hanging off another buck’s antlers
The buck then stayed in the area for a few weeks – dragging the head of its foe along with him – before disappearing in December.
Mr Brown told West Central Tribune: ‘I don’t know where he went,’ Brown said. ‘He didn’t look very good. On the pictures, he looked skinny, and I’m sure he wasn’t eating very well. And then we got the cold temperatures, and nobody saw him again after that. I’m sure he probably died.’
Bill Jensen, a big game biologist for the North Dakota Game and Fish Department in Bismarck, agreed that the animals would have eventually killed each other.
Mr Jensen said the living buck may have attacked a scavagned deer carcass and became entangled with the antlers that way.
He added if the buck survived, the antlers would have dropped off, an annual process which happens sooner for deers under stress.
Mr Jensen said: ‘Once his physical condition deteriorates he will drop his antlers and be rid of the other head.’
Yet due to the clean nature of the tear, Jay Boulanger, an assistant professor of wildlife ecology, said the cut may have been caused by humans.
He said: ‘This was not likely done by predators. Coyotes, for example, may have torn at the flesh more, and would have likely gone for the other buck too.’