Hart (deer)

A hart is a male red deer, synonymous with stag and used in contrast to the female hind; its use may now be considered mostly poetic or archaic. The word comes from Middle English hert, from Old English heorot; compare Frisian hart, Dutch hert, German Hirsch, and Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish hjort, all meaning "deer". Heorot is given as the name of Hrothgar's mead hall in the Old English epic Beowulf. Historically, hart has also been used generically to mean "deer, antelope", as in the royal antelope, which Willem Bosman called "the king of the harts". The word hart was also sometimes used in the past specifically to describe a stag of more than five years. In medieval hunting terms, a stag in its first year was called a "calf" or "calfe", in its second a "brocket", in its third a "spayed", "spade", or "spayard", in its fourth a "staggerd" or "staggard", and in its fifth a "stag", or a "great stag". To be a "hart" was its fully mature state. A lord would want to hunt not just any deer, but a mature stag in good condition, partly for the extra meat and fat it would carry, but also for prestige. Hence, a hart could be designated "a hart of grease", (a fat stag), "a hart of ten", (a stag with 10 points on its antlers) or "a royal hart" (a stag which had been hunted by a royal personage). A stag which was old enough to be hunted was called a "warrantable" stag. The hart was a beast of venery representing the most prestigious form of hunting, as distinct from lesser beasts of the Chase and beasts of the free warren, the last of which were regarded virtually as vermin. The membership of these different classes varies somewhat across periods and writers, but the red deer is always in the first class, the red fox hardly being regarded at all. Like the fallow deer buck and the wild boar, the hart was normally sought out or "harboured" by a "limer", or Bloodhound hunting on a leash, which would track it from its droppings or footprints to where it was browsing. The huntsman would then report back to his lord and the hunting party would come bringing a pack of raches.