Limer

A limer, or lymer /ˈlaɪmər/, was a kind of dog, a scenthound, used on a leash in medieval times to find large game before it was hunted down by the pack.

The handlers would then report back to their lord, or the chief huntsman, who would decide on the one "which seemed to have harbored the greatest and oldest Deere, and hym which lyeth in the fairest covert".

The limer and its handler would then set about the task of harbouring the quarry again, perhaps by following its blood-trail, and either the injured animal would be dispatched, or the hunt would resume as before.

The limer which had harboured the particular quarry should, according to the manuals, be the first to be rewarded with its special part of the carcass during the process of butchering it, apparent in this link, where the leashed hound is favoured with the head of the stag, while the raches wait impatiently for their share.

In Great Britain, the hart, the wild boar and the fallow deer buck were the only animals to be harboured with the limer; all other game was found, as well as hunted, by the free-running raches.

By the late 16th century, as hunting practices were beginning to change, it was becoming rarer, and later usage reflects some confusion about what it refers to, some authors just regarding it as a large mastiff-type dog of impure breeding.