Glossary
There’s no recording of this volume, so your phone reads it out, section by section.
The old words and the new ones. Slot, fewmet, fray, gralloch, havier, pricket, and everything you will hear around the fire.
Find a word
Every word on both trips is here, in plain English, with the volume that explains it properly. Search, pick a subject, or flick through a letter at a time. Words with an Old word tag have been in hunting for centuries, and each one says where it came from.
The old words
Hunting in medieval England was run by people who spoke French, and it kept a language of its own long after the rest of the country moved on. The art itself was called venery, and getting its words wrong at the table marked you as someone who had never been in the field.
Plenty of it is still in use. A deer's print is its slot, its droppings are fewmets, and a sapling it has thrashed with its antlers is a fray. Ben Jonson put all three in a single line of a play in 1641, and a reader then would have known exactly what he meant.
The Scots gave us the rest. To gralloch a deer comes straight from Gaelic, and it survived because Highland stalking survived. Australian and New Zealand hunters took the lot with them, which is why a word older than the printing press still gets used in the back of a ute an hour inland of Tenterfield.
None of it is compulsory. Say gut instead of gralloch and nobody will mind. But knowing the words means you can read a hunting book written in 1576 and follow a conversation at the fire tonight, and that is worth something.
Lore
In The Sad Shepherd, Ben Jonson has a huntsman praise a deer by its sign: "For by his slot, his entries, and his port, / His frayings, fewmets, he doth promise sport." Written down in 1641, and every word of it still has a meaning in a stalker's mouth.
Lore
Every animal had its own word for resting. An 1819 hunting manual set them out: the stag is harboured, the buck lodged, the fox kennelled, the badger earthed, the otter vented, the hare formed and the rabbit set.
Lore
Venison did not always mean deer. It comes from the Latin for a hunt, and for centuries it meant the meat of any large game animal, boar included. Deer just ended up owning the word.
First light, and his slot was fresh in the sand at the creek crossing. A new fray on a wattle, warm fewmets on the pad, and the wind steady in our faces. We glassed him lodged in the shade of a stringybark: a sorrel by the look of his head, so we let him walk. On the way back a pricket stepped out at eighty metres. By dark he was gralloched, on the gambrel and hanging.
A buck's names, year by year
The Boke of St Albans, printed in 1486, gave a fallow buck a different name for every year of his life: fawn, pricket, sorrel, sore, buck of the first head, and finally buck. Later writers added the great buck for an animal in his prime.
The names are really about antlers. A pricket carries plain spikes. A sorrel shows his first brow and trez tines. The palm comes later, and a buck can take six or seven years to reach his best. Feed, genetics and a dry year all move the timetable, so modern stalkers use the names to describe the head in front of them rather than a birth date.
They are also the ranks in your logbook. Master volumes in the field games and you climb the same ladder a buck does, from fawn to great buck.
Fawn
Born in early summer, mostly in December in New South Wales. A buck fawn shows only two small bumps where the pedicles will grow. Your logbook starts here.
Pricket
His first antlers: two plain spikes. The word is prick, a spike, with a small ending tacked on, and it has been in English since the Middle Ages.
Sorrel
The brow and trez tines usually show for the first time. Sorrel and sore both come from the Old French for reddish brown.
Sore
The top of the beam starts to flatten. Most bucks show their first real palm with the third or fourth set of antlers.
Buck of the first head
A proper palm with spellers along the back edge. Later writers called this year a bare buck, and the sources still argue about it.
Buck
A mature buck with a full palm. In the old books, this is where the names stop and the animal simply becomes a buck.
Great buck
The Boke judged him by his head, not his age: palmed antlers with four advancers and twenty-four spellers. The top of your logbook, too.
Say it right
Six words that trip people up. Have a go at each one, then turn the card over.
Words on the paperwork
Firearms licence
What you need to own or use a firearm in NSW. It comes in categories by type of firearm, and since 1 July 2026 a new licence runs for two years at most. The rules are in The Law in NSW.
Category B
The NSW category that covers centrefire rifles that are not self-loading, which takes in the usual bolt-action deer rifle.
Genuine reason
The lawful purpose you have to show to hold a licence. For hunting, that usually means owning rural land, having the landholder's permission, or belonging to an approved hunting club.
PTA
Permit to Acquire. The permit needed before you buy each firearm in NSW.
Landholder permission
The owner's or occupier's say-so to hunt their land. Police can ask to see it, so carry it in writing, naming the property and what you are hunting.
R-licence
The restricted game hunting licence, needed to hunt on declared public land in NSW. Deer on private land have needed no game licence since September 2019.
Licence to harm
A licence that lets a landholder have kangaroos culled, under strict conditions and following the national code for humane shooting.
Arms Act 2026
New Zealand's firearms law. It replaced the Arms Act 1983, and most of it took effect on 23 September 2026. The detail is in The Law in NZ.
FSE
Firearms Safety and Education New Zealand, which took over firearms licensing on 23 September 2026.
Visitor firearms licence
The New Zealand licence a visitor needs to bring their own firearm into the country.
DOC hunting permit
The Department of Conservation permit you need to hunt on New Zealand public conservation land.
BICON
Australia's biosecurity import conditions system. It sets out what a trophy must look like to come home, which for a finished trophy means fully tanned and clean, with boiled skulls and horns.
CITES
The international agreement on trade in endangered species. Himalayan tahr and chamois are not listed, so it does not apply to bringing one home.
Not legal advice
These are plain-English pointers, current as of October 2026. Firearms law in both countries is in the middle of change, so check anything that matters with the NSW Police Firearms Registry, DPIRD, or Firearms Safety and Education New Zealand.