TEAZER, or _teaser_. "A kind of mongrel greyhound whose business is to drive away the deer before the Greyhounds are slipt," is the definition given by Blome (p. 96). These dogs were used to hunt up the game also when the deer was to be shot with the bow. The sportsmen would be standing at their trysts or stable-stand in some alley or glade of the wood, and the hounds be put into the covert or park "_to tease them forth_." TRACE, slot, or footprint of deer. In O. F. and Ang.-N. literature the word trace seems to have been used indifferently for the track of the stag, wild boar, or any game (Borman, notes 147, 236, 237). G. de F. expressly says that the footprint of the deer should not be called _trace_ but _voyes_ or _piés_ (view or foot), yet the "Master of Game" in his rendering says: "Of the hart ye shall say 'trace,'" so evidently that was the proper sporting term in England at the time. When slot entirely superseded the word trace amongst sportsmen it is difficult to determine. Turbervile uses slot, and in the beginning of the seventeenth century it seems the general term for the footprint of deer (Man., p. 180; Stuart Glossary, vol. ii.; Blome, p. 76). Slot, it may be contended, is as old a word as trace, but in Mid. Eng. it was employed as a general term for a foot-track or marking of any animal. The trace or slot was one of the signs of a stag, that is the mark by which an experienced huntsman could recognise the age, size, and sex of the deer. The old stag leaves a blunter print with a wider heel than a hind, but it is difficult to distinguish the slot of a hind from that of a young stag. Although the latter has invariably a bigger heel and makes deeper marks with his dewclaws, yet his toes are narrow and pointed, their edges are sharp, and the distance between his steps is somewhat unequal, all of which may lead his slotting to be mistaken for the tracks of a hind. "He has found what he wanted," says Dr. Collyns, when speaking of the harbourer, "the rounded track, the blunted toe point, the widespread mark, the fresh slot, in short, of a stag" ("Chase of the Red Deer").