I think they died of thirst. They were in a small wash about 20 yards from water and it looked like the one was dragging the other towards water until it got to a small encline and couldn't go any farther. And yes nothing had started eating them yet. As for them being locked I was really hopeing they were torqued together, but once I cut the heads off the antlers came apart fairly easily. If you look at the main beams you can see how close they come together. That was the real reason for them getting locked up. The main beam was godging into the kneck of the other deer.