Confronted with a cow, the wild deer showed fear (7)
I believe the answer is:
cowered
'showed fear' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'confronted with a cow the wild deer' is the wordplay.
I cannot really understand how this works, but
'with' could be 'w' (abbreviation) and 'w' is present in the answer.
an anagram of 'deer' is 'ered' which is present in the answer.
The remaining letters 'co' is a valid word which might be clued in a way I don't see.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for cowered that I've seen before include "looked fearful" , "Showed fear" , "Cringed" .)