The roebuck is a common beast enough, and therefore I need not to tell of his making, for there be few men that have not seen some of them. It is a good little beast and goodly for to hunt to whoso can do it as I shall devise hereafter, for there be few hunters that can well devise his nature. They go in their love that is called bokeyng in October[56], and the bucking of them lasteth but fifteen days or there about. At the bucking of the roebuck he hath to do but with one female for all the season, and a male and a female abide together as the hinds[57] till the time that the female shall have her kids; and then the female parteth from the male and goeth to kid her kids far from thence, for the male would slay the young if he could find them. And when they be big that they can eat by themselves of the herbs and of the leaves and can run away, then the female cometh again to the male, and they shall ever be together unless they be slain, and if one hunt them and part them asunder one from another, they will come together again as soon as they can and will seek each other until the time that one of them have found the other. And the cause why the male and the female be evermore together as no other beast in this world, is that commonly the female hath two kids at once, one male and the other female, and because they are kidded together they hold evermore together. And yet if they were not kidded together of one female, yet is the nature of them such that they will always hold together as I have said before. When they withdraw from the bucking, they mew their heads, for men will find but few roebucks that have passed two years that have not mewed their heads by All Hallowtide. And after the heads come again rough as a hart's head, and commonly they burnish their horns in March. The roebuck hath no season to be hunted, for they bear no venison[58] but men should leave them the females for their kids that would be lost unto the time that they have kidded, and that the kids can feed themselves and live by themselves without their dame. It is good hunting for it lasteth all the year and they run well, and longer than does a great hart in high season time. Roebucks cannot be judged by their fumes, and but little by their track as one can of harts, for a man cannot know the male from the female by her feet or by her fumes. [56] This is wrong; they rut in the beginning of August. See Appendix: Roe. [57] A clerical error. G. de F. (p. 36) says, "as do birds," which makes good sense. [58] See Appendix: Grease.