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, although for example it remains in use in the name of inns and pubs.

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.

[6] 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 word is used several times in The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien, when Bilbo Baggins and company pass through Mirkwood Forest.

It is mentioned in the first of the series of novels by George R. R. Martin Game of Thrones when a "white hart" is sighted in the woods: King Robert Baratheon and other lords seek to hunt the creature (perhaps an allusion to Robert himself becoming something of a white or ghost stag).

[10][better source needed] Heorot, Herut, and Hert are Old English spellings of hart; thus Heorot, a royal hall in Beowulf, is named for the hart, as is Hertford and Hertfordshire in England (which in turn lent the name to Hartford, Connecticut).