The king of all the wild animals was the deer, and more precisely the hart, which is an adult male of the red deer. The hart was classified by the number of tines, or points, on its antlers. An animal should have at least ten tines to be considered worthy of hunting; this was referred to as a "hart of ten." Deer could be hunted in two different ways: par force ("by strength") and hereunder par force de chiens ("by force of dogs"), and "bow and stable".
Hunting par force was considered the noblest form of hunting. In this process the game was run down and exhausted by the dogs before the kill was made. Par force hunting consisted of eight parts: the quest, the assembly, the relays, the moving or un-harboring, the chase, the baying, the unmaking and the curée.