Deer Hunting

[Timberwolf_2387]

I just recently started playing The Long Dark on my new PC. I found the rifle and a few rifle rounds. At this point, I decided to try my hand at deer hunting. I applied the same technique of real life deer hunting to TLD gameplay. For example, I aimed right behind the shoulder of the buck I intended to bring down. I know I hit my target. There was a blood splatter and a blood trail that I followed to eventually bring down my prey. I just wondered why it took 2-3 additional shots from a rifle of such caliber to do the job after my initial shot? I tried chasing/tracking it long enough for the buck to bleed out and it never did. Am I missing something in terms of gameplay mechanics? I know the rifle will take down a wolf. I’ve shot two that we’re charging me during my scavenging of Mystery Lake. Sorry if this has already been posted. I just didn’t know what I did wrong to produce such a result while deer hunting.

[Mroz4k]

Sounds to me you just got unlucky and grazed it. This happens sometimes, but it happens more often with a bow. If you hit the animal on a very edge of its body, sometimes it will register as a hit, there will be a blood splatter effect, you will get the skill point for the hit, but it won't actually trigger bleeding in the animal. Also, it should only run away a little bit away and then stop again. If it started running away in panic all over the place, it meant you hit the animal correctly and it was bleeding. But bleeding (especially from the rifle) takes a while - for a deer with a rifle, a torso shot which is what you did according to your description is 45 in-game minutes to bleed out.

The mistake you did was to assume it will be the same way as in real life. In TLD, the rifle has no bullet drop - so where you point, its where the shot will be placed. On top of that, it can only shoot at mid-long distance - don't expect to hail mary a distant shot with it because at some point, the bullet just disappears into the air.

If you want to bring down a deer, aim at the head or at the heart. I know those two things have a 100% instant kill chance. Otherwise you will probably have to wait for it to bleed out. A cheesy way to do that is to open up the radical window and select to "wait" a couple of hours - then the animal will stop running around but it will still be bleeding, so when you finish it will already be down, dead. I don't use that, though - I like to track my kills instead.

 Rifle hunting is easy because you can always shoot out of crouching, so the best way to bring a deer down is to carefully sneak up on it from the side where the wind doesn't blow against the animal, and shoot it from side into a head for that instant kill Ideally when the deer stops and puts its head down, because then you know it will be stationary.

You can find more information here on the wiki.

[Salty Crackers]

For some reason, the only way to kill a deer instantly is to shoot it in the head. Shooting it anywhere else has a small chance of instantly killing it, but it most likely won't. If it doesn't die, you usually have to wait 1-2 ingame hours for the buck to bleed out. After you shoot it, never shoot it again. No matter where you shoot it, it will die eventually. Shooting it multiple times doesn't usually make it bleed faster and just wastes ammunition, a very rare resource.

Don't bother tracking the buck. Find somewhere warm and wait it out. If you want, you can check the game statistics and see if the "deer killed" statistic increased, but that's kind of cheap. When you want to check if the deer died, go to where you shot it and look for crows, which will be circling the carcass.

[Timberwolf_2387]

18 minutes ago, Mroz4k said:

Sounds to me you just got unlucky and grazed it. This happens sometimes, but it happens more often with a bow. If you hit the animal on a very edge of its body, sometimes it will register as a hit, there will be a blood splatter effect, you will get the skill point for the hit, but it won't actually trigger bleeding in the animal. Also, it should only run away a little bit away and then stop again. If it started running away in panic all over the place, it meant you hit the animal correctly and it was bleeding. But bleeding (especially from the rifle) takes a while - for a deer with a rifle, a torso shot which is what you did according to your description is 45 in-game minutes to bleed out..

You can find more information here on the wiki.

I got close and then crouched to steady my aim. I’m sure I was upwind of the animal since I was close enough to make an easy shot and it never saw it coming. I followed the old rule: "Always have the wind in your face while hunting."

It did run in a panic upon impact of the round. I guess it was bleeding and I needed to wait the in-game time period to track the kill down.

Now I know not to waste ammo. I should have followed my instinct to not fire my rifle again. Anyway, Thanks for the wiki link.

[Mroz4k]

20 minutes ago, Salty Crackers said:

For some reason, the only way to kill a deer instantly is to shoot it in the head. Shooting it anywhere else has a small chance of instantly killing it, but it most likely won't.

If you hit the deer in the torso or hind, you still roll a chance of getting an instakill hit, but it no longer is a 100% like in case of the head. Same goes for bows. The only time you cant kill it instantly is when you hit it in the leg. Then you get to wait, for 8 hours. But the crit chance for shot into the torso being an instakill is not that small - for rifle and basic skill it is about 60%.

Rifles have high damage, high critical chance but slow bleeding effect. Bow have low damage, low crit chance and fast bleeding rates. Flare guns have no critical chance but cause massive bleeding if the flare gets stuck in the animal, and guarantees to scare the animal away... those are the fundamental differences between the weapons.

23 minutes ago, Salty Crackers said:

usually have to wait 1-2 ingame hours for the buck to bleed out.

45 minutes for a torso shot on deer. 1 hour for hindsides. 8 for a leg shot. It is twice shorter for bow shots.

25 minutes ago, Salty Crackers said:

No matter where you shoot it, it will die eventually. Shooting it multiple times doesn't usually make it bleed faster and just wastes ammunition, a very rare resource.

Unless you just grazed it, this is very true. But its individual way of playing. I would also recommend shooting once and not bothering again. Bullets are rare. But shooting it repeatedly actually does damage the deer more, so after three shots from a rifle, the deer will drop, guaranteed. 

27 minutes ago, Salty Crackers said:

Don't bother tracking the buck. Find somewhere warm and wait it out. If you want, you can check the game statistics and see if the "deer killed" statistic increased, but that's kind of cheap.

If you are going to be cheap, might as well do what I said - just wait for the period of time where you are, the deer will be stopped in its spot and will bleed out in that specific spot, which makes it easy to harvest afterwards.

I disagree with this statement, though. Bother tracking the deer down. Being able to locate a fresh kill gives you the freshest meat, and with the carcass still warm you can even take it apart with hands, no tools required. Always take the meat first, and once you take it, drop it to the ground immediately - two reasons - you won't be attacked by wolves that way, and you guts with leather take a while to harvest, and their condition does not matter - but condition of meat on carcass is a precious thing if you are trying to stockpile it a bit. Taking it as soon as possible preserves the most of the meat well. Additionally, the wildlife won't eat your kill so you can choose to harvest the leather and guts later, maybe on better conditions. 

But not tracking the deer means you are risking you won't even find it again. By tracking it for a while, at least you will have a better general idea where it might die later on.

32 minutes ago, Salty Crackers said:

When you want to check if the deer died, go to where you shot it and look for crows, which will be circling the carcass.

This is unreliable for several reasons. First, for crows to appear, you will need perfect weather. If you don't have that and its blowing wind rather strongly, there will be no crows. Same with blizzard or fog. 
Also, the crows appear after several hours of carcass lying there - meaning by the time they show up, the precious meat spoiled quite a bit. Also, it will be 100% frozen, too.
This is not reliable at all - if the deer bled for a while, it can be miles away from where you shot it. It is not uncommon for them to cross half of a smaller region when they are escaping while bleeding.
And finally, if it runs into a wolf and wolf kills it, the wolf will eat it. This is extremely rare, but it can happen. 

Crows are the easiest way to find a carcass, true, but it's far more rewarding to find it sooner.

28 minutes ago, Timberwolf_2387 said:

Now I know not to waste ammo.

That's a good ideology. It is possible to bring down animals instantly by repeated shots, but given how rare bullets are, you should not waste any ammo by shooting them any more than once. If you did not simply graze them, the animal will bleed out eventually. Just be careful with bears - they take issue to getting shot by a rifle unless you get lucky and send them into the eternal realm with the first shot. It's not a 100% insta kill, hitting a bear in the head.

[Timberwolf_2387]

@Mroz4k I'm assuming I need to bring enough materials to keep a fire going (As I track the animal) until I can confirm the game is down and harvestable?

[Mroz4k]

37 minutes ago, Timberwolf_2387 said:

@Mroz4k I'm assuming I need to bring enough materials to keep a fire going (As I track the animal) until I can confirm the game is down and harvestable?

Depends on your clothes, and the weather conditions, really. If you spot changes in weather that indicate an incoming blizzard, maybe you should give up on the tracking and go hide in the shelter instead (but really, this will likely mean the deer may just "disappear" into thin air because blizzard makes the animal despawn, even if they are bleeding, they respawn just fine afterwards.

But yes, I usually keep a cedar or two logs on me, and I pick up sticks as I go. If it gets really cold, at least you have something to warm yourself over - and additionally, you can create a fire next to the carcass to keep it thawed as you process it, or even cook some of that meat directly for the immediate consumption. Especially when I harvest bears, I separate the "meat" part of the carcass into three segments (usually it means working on 12 kg of meat at a time - and I will often build a fire by the time I finish harvesting second batch, to warm myself up and keep the animal thawed. It cuts down harvesting time drastically when its thawed.  

You don't need a lot, just enough to warm yourself and maybe help with thawing the carcass. I also recommend bringing at least a piece of coal with you so if the little amount of wood you have is not warm enough, dropping a coal on top will make it so.

I talk more about how I harvest carcasses in this thread - but this is about bears which are ultimately the most tricky to harvest because there is just so much you can take off of them. Deer are easy to handle. 

[Timberwolf_2387]

The bow looks like it will be used more than the rifle. If I can retrieve arrows, craft new ones, and continue repairing the bow, will I be able to hunt until game is depleted in a region? Does that Wiki link give me information regarding the crafting of the bow? I've harvested some saplings and they are curing on my floor in the Camp Office on Mystery Lake. Are these used for arrows and bows?

[ingrobny]

2 hours ago, Timberwolf_2387 said:

I just recently started playing The Long Dark on my new PC. I found the rifle and a few rifle rounds. At this point, I decided to try my hand at deer hunting. I applied the same technique of real life deer hunting to TLD gameplay. For example, I aimed right behind the shoulder of the buck I intended to bring down. I know I hit my target. There was a blood splatter and a blood trail that I followed to eventually bring down my prey. I just wondered why it took 2-3 additional shots from a rifle of such caliber to do the job after my initial shot? I tried chasing/tracking it long enough for the buck to bleed out and it never did. Am I missing something in terms of gameplay mechanics? I know the rifle will take down a wolf. I’ve shot two that we’re charging me during my scavenging of Mystery Lake. Sorry if this has already been posted. I just didn’t know what I did wrong to produce such a result while deer hunting.

The best is to crouch and wait to the deer is really close and shoot it in the head, it will go down with one shot with the rifle.

[Mroz4k]

29 minutes ago, Timberwolf_2387 said:

The bow looks like it will be used more than the rifle. If I can retrieve arrows, craft new ones, and continue repairing the bow, will I be able to hunt until game is depleted in a region? Does that Wiki link give me information regarding the crafting of the bow? I've harvested some saplings and they are curing on my floor in the Camp Office on Mystery Lake. Are these used for arrows and bows?

Maple saplings are used for bows, birch ones for arrows. And yes, the bow is much more versatile. I prefer bow hunting anytime to a rifle, for a long list of reasons. The wiki has quite extensive info on the bows, if you look it up - but the crafting should be seen in the crafting section of the game, or at least by clicking the workbench. The thing with a bow is that you will only rarely drop the animals instantly, but the arrows cause faster bleeding so they are usually not that difficult to find. But with bow hunting, you need to change the methods of your hunting quite a lot - because until you get to level 5 archery, you won't be able to fire your bow when crouched. That means sneaking up on animals will be difficult, and hitting something with a bow from distance is not so easy. There are several ways to hunt deer with a bow.

Some people prefer to sneak from the back of the deer, stand up when they are close, and as the deer starts running away, shoot it in the ass. For some reason, this often results in an instakill it seems.

Ingrobny suggests similar way of dealing with it but from the front. 

I personally prefer even different approach. I like to scare the deer intentionally towards some rocks, or in a forest - because quite often, the deer will turn around and start running in a panic around the obstacles, many times directly towards me. Then its just a matter of aiming the bow a bit in the direction the deer is running and thump - there goes the headshot, which has a high instakill chance even with lower skills.

Also, since arrows and bows are technically unlimited resource, it is worth sometimes to waste arrows on rabbits just to get your skill raised up, or even shooting deer several times to increase your skill. If you lose an arrow, no big deal - there is so many of them in the game you should never even have to rely on beachcombing - but on Coastal maps, the ice will sometimes spawn scrap metal and saplings, so in theory, bows and arrows are unlimited in the game.

We discussed deer hunting with bows quite a lot in this thread

[Timberwolf_2387]

12 minutes ago, Mroz4k said:

Also, since arrows and bows are technically unlimited resource, it is worth sometimes to waste arrows on rabbits just to get your skill raised up, or even shooting deer several times to increase your skill. If you lose an arrow, no big deal - there is so many of them in the game you should never even have to rely on beachcombing - but on Coastal maps, the ice will sometimes spawn scrap metal and saplings, so in theory, bows and arrows are unlimited in the game.

This is good to know. I've only begun to explore Mystery Lake. I've visited mostly what is near the Camp Office. The fishing huts, derailment, and the cabins. I'm having a hard time finding my way to the lookout and the hydroelectric dam. I found the rifle behind one of the cabins on the far side of the lake. I found a box of ammo by the derailment. That's how I was able to hunt so early. I need to eventually move on to the next area as supplies in my immediate area are becoming scarce. I've watched a few "Let's Plays" and I have had a few hours of gameplay on an Xbox One S. This is my first experience with TLD on a PC. I'm very much liking it. My rig is capable of running it with everything on the highest settings. It looks a lot better than what I was used to seeing on the XB1.

[Salty Crackers]

Condition on raw meat doesn't matter that much, as the meat gains 50% condition when cooked. It's still probably a good idea to do what you said, because meat decays crazy fast when on the carcass and wolf attacks are still a risk. 

[Timberwolf_2387]

@Salty Crackers I've noticed the condition of fish does improve when cooked. At the moment, I seem to be sustaining myself on fish from Mystery Lake. The two wolves and the deer that I brought down really helped with hunger.

I've been following this game for a long time. I just could never really afford a decent gaming PC until now. I finally got in on the action and I'm very glad that I did. I'm having a blast surviving in The Quiet Apocalypse.

[Mroz4k]

24 minutes ago, Salty Crackers said:

Condition on raw meat doesn't matter that much, as the meat gains 50% condition when cooked.

It makes all the difference in the world before you reach level 5 cooking. To decrease the chance of getting afflictions like food poisoning before reaching level 5, you need to cook all the meat around 50-45% condition. So when you stockpile meats from hunts, the longer it can stay stockpiled, the better. Gives you more time to focus on other tasks like firewood gathering, water stockpiling, runs to the forge, etc.

 

[Timberwolf_2387]

@Mroz4k If I stockpile cooked meat outside of the Camp Office will it degrade slower since it is a cold climate? Also, will predators take my cooked game?

[Mroz4k]

12 minutes ago, Timberwolf_2387 said:

@Mroz4k If I stockpile cooked meat outside of the Camp Office will it degrade slower since it is a cold climate? Also, will predators take my cooked game?

Nope, they won't. And yes, cooked meat degrades much slower when thrown outside on the ground, then kept indoors or even carried in an inventory. Which is why you want to drop the raw meat to the ground as soon as you pull it out of the carcass. 

Wolves and bears are only interested in meat if they start looking at you, and you drop it down with a hotkey or out of inventory, as a "bait" - then they will turn their attention to the bait you dropped instead, eat it, retreat, and if you are still in the vicinity, they will home in on your again if they see you again. But throwing a meat down when the wolf doesn't see you will not make it interested in the meat. Not very realistic but it's like that. Even if they spot you later on, and there is a piece of meat already lying on the ground, they won't notice it - you need to drop it when they are already stalking you.  If you are still sceptical, keep the meat stored on things like porches, as most of the time wildlife cant climb on the porches.

Also, they won't eat carcasses unless they killed them themselves. That may be an issue rarely as a bleeding deer can run into a wolf which kills it and proceeds to eat it. If you chase a wolf away with a torch or flare from its kill, they won't return to eating it afterwards.

Food spoiling: All the meats and fish are best stored outside. On Voyager, any meat outside degrades at speed of 1% per day, roughly. In inventory or inside this is close to 7% I think. 
All canned items need to be stored inside. They degrade very, very slowly inside, but if left outside, they will rust very fast. Even leaving them in cars makes them spoil really fast.

[selfless]

On 10/1/2017 at 3:28 PM, Mroz4k said:

Rifles have high damage, high critical chance but slow bleeding effect. Bow have low damage, low crit chance and fast bleeding rates. Flare guns have no critical chance but cause massive bleeding if the flare gets stuck in the animal, and guarantees to scare the animal away... those are the fundamental differences between the weapons.

The Distress Pistol (or Flare Gun) can and does cause many criticals (instakills).  I've dropped a bear in his tracks with a flare to the face many times.  Chance seems to be similar to that of the bow.  Otherwise I think you got it.

[JAFO]

On 02/10/2017 at 6:00 AM, Salty Crackers said:

For some reason, the only way to kill a deer instantly is to shoot it in the head.

Not so.. right up the arse will quite often result in an insta-kill.