Advantage of using snares and rabbit respawn rate

[EjectedCasings]

Is there any particular reason to use snares rather than just hunt for rabbits yourself? Does it catch rabbits regardless of how depleted the rabbit population is? Or do people just use it to make their rabbit catching faster?

On a similar note, what are the respawn times for rabbits on Pilgrim and Voyaguer?

[UpUpAway95]

The advantage is that it is passive... meaning that you can be out hunting deer or whatever or looting whatever while your snares may catch some rabbits as well.  I've never caught anything if I've set them in locations where rabbits were not already spawning.  Rabbit spawn chance on PIlgrim is set to "very high"; which is the easiest setting and they are set to just "high" on Voyageur.  The reduction in wildlife population over time on Pilgrim is set to none and on Voyageur is set to low.  So, on Pilgrim I would not expect the snare rate of rabbits to decline over time, but I would expect a slight decline of the snare's effectiveness over time on Voyageur.

[acada]

I am not so sure that it is impossible to ensnare rabbit outside their zones. I just put one snare right on the road in front of Quonset Gas Station (Voyger difficulty). There was one cought after few days. I set t trap even inside the Quonset. Just for shit and giggles. Sadly no rabbit was inside.

The main pro ensnaring is you dont loose your energy running and throwing. My success rate hitting rabbit with stone is not great. So I set 4 traps in the place rabbits are hopping and next morning I get 3-4 rabbits to process.

I noticed something strange. When I set the trap at morning and check it the same day evening without entering any interior, there is nothing caught. Then I go inside to get a sleep. After that next morning or mid day, I go out straight to traps. According caught rabbits freeze status, it seems like they have been caught right when I stepped out the interior location.

[Dan_]

I have done some testing with snaring ( in preparation for my old-style deadman retirement ) in the past and my anedoctal observations are:

There's a common conclusion in these forums that the snares take a while to get active after being moved or set up ( like 12 hours ) and are checked for new spawns in intervals of 3 hours after that, so you might need to check multiple times ( often coming out of an indoor location or sleeping to trigger the checks ). I've done exactly this and had good success both in the ravine and trappers ( playing standard interloper ).

As long as there is a rabbit there, a bunny grove is considered to be active and can be used to trap rabbits until the population declines. I've tested this at the ravine and got a ton of trapped bunnies even though there was only one rabbit doing the hippity hopping at the time I've set the snares. I've got fewer and fewer as the days gone by, I was using eight snares, mind you.

Depending on difficulty level, rabbits are borderline profitable calorie-wise to sustain yourself(not sure if the snares are, stoning is better when you're just moving about). In Interloper I rarely rely on them, just when I need to save a can of food early game for my end game collection ( I'm weird, I know... ). If you like the homesteading playstyle and setting up a long term base, rabbits are definitely a good complement to your calorie surplus but I wouldn't rely on them solely for my nutrition. Also, not harvesting every gut and hide makes them decent for caloric surplus, having a tool to harvest also improves the calorie burn/replenish ratio greatly. 

Lastly, finding a sweet spot in a rabbit grove will definetely improve your yield. I usually set up long lines of snares and sorta triangulate the overall best spots for setting up the snares, takes a few days but these spots seem to be set in the scenery and won't change in the next playthough I feel like. 

Good luck trapping! 

 

[ajb1978]

Yeah, when I went to earn the master trapper badge, I set up something like 30 snares due south of the Pleasant Valley farmstead, in that little rabbit grove near Molly's barn.  I was getting just ridiculous amounts of rabbits that way, like sometimes 10+ in one day.  (Edit: And to clarify, this was every day for a couple weeks straight.  The rabbit grove never ran out.)  To try and accrue that many via active hunting would require some pretty excellent stone throwing skills, as well as traveling to multiple rabbit groves in one day.

Basically if you just need one or two rabbits for their hide or gut, hunting is the way to go.  You can get what you need lickety-split.  If on the other hand you're farming rabbits for food, then set up a nice big snare line, and you'll be rolling in rabbit meat.

Edited January 12, 2020 by ajb1978

[UTC-10]

That's interesting.

I recall (a long time ago) there was some thoughts and discussion about depletion of rabbits if over hunted. I recall (back in early access I think) where I put out three snares on Jackrabbit island and took three a day for quite a while then the visible rabbits seemed to disappear and the snares started to turn up empty. I went to another zone, Desolation I think, for a month, came back and even then the rabbit population didn't seem to have recovered.

That experience had always affected how many snares I would put out (only one to three and take them down after several days of snaring). I did find that throwing stones was easier to get rabbits than snaring but I am working on getting my badge. I may lay more snares now. 

[UpUpAway95]

23 hours ago, UTC-10 said:

That's interesting.

I recall (a long time ago) there was some thoughts and discussion about depletion of rabbits if over hunted. I recall (back in early access I think) where I put out three snares on Jackrabbit island and took three a day for quite a while then the visible rabbits seemed to disappear and the snares started to turn up empty. I went to another zone, Desolation I think, for a month, came back and even then the rabbit population didn't seem to have recovered.

That experience had always affected how many snares I would put out (only one to three and take them down after several days of snaring). I did find that throwing stones was easier to get rabbits than snaring but I am working on getting my badge. I may lay more snares now. 

I think it's a case of whether or not that particular "grove" (i.e. area of the map) is an active spawn point for rabbits at the particular time in the file that you're setting traps.  I recently had a file where I wasn't seeing any rabbits spawning in the grove along the river just past the Southern Access.  I set up 6 snares.  I've caught several rabbits there on other files, but on that particular file it never did yield a single rabbit after several days and several re-placement of my snares.  It just was not an active rabbit spawn point in that particular file.  As the time goes on and fewer animals are to spawn overall, I believe the game shuts down random spawn points... so those areas probably would cease to yield rabbits in snares once that happens.  I would also expect it to affect the number of rabbits you might snare each night, but I think that would be difficult to test since snare resutls are affected by RNG right from the start of a run.  I also think it would take many long comparative tests to determine if the new feat has much of an effect on improving those numbers.  In some pilgrim files, I have no troulbe snaring 4 to 6 rabbits a night for many nights in a row and in others I've had the traps go empty for days (and the snares often wind up ruined).  It's just mostly RNG-generated "luck."

[Serenity]

On 1/12/2020 at 2:03 PM, Dan_ said:

I've tested this at the ravine and got a ton of trapped bunnies even though there was only one rabbit doing the hippity hopping at the time I've set the snares.

Because you aren't really trapping the existing bunnies. Instead a carcass teleports into the snare if the game wants to give you one

[Guest jeffpeng]

On 1/12/2020 at 2:03 PM, Dan_ said:

Depending on difficulty level, rabbits are borderline profitable calorie-wise to sustain yourself

 

On 1/12/2020 at 2:03 PM, Dan_ said:

not harvesting every gut and hide makes them decent for caloric surplus, having a tool to harvest also improves the calorie burn/replenish ratio greatly. 

Base calorie consumption on Interloper is 125. 1kg of rabbit meat is 450 calorie cooked. Harvesting 1kg of rabbit meat costs. Harvesting has a x2 calorie multiplier. We assume that we fill all the time we spend cooking with something else useful, like preparing tea, sharpening knives, harvesting more meat, etc etc, so we don't factor in cooking time.

• 0.5 hours x 2 x 125 = 125 calories with bare hands
• 0.25 hours x 2 x 125 = 62.5 calories with a hacksaw (or hatchet)
• 0.125 hours x 2 x 125 = 31.25 calories with a knife

Playing interloper we will probably preserve our knife for more important tasks / time critical tasks. However using bare hands costs us a full hour worth of calories per kilogram. Using the hacksaw however seems reasonable. So with Cooking I and Carcass Harvesting I we gain 450 - 62.5 = 387,5 per kilogram. Assuming the average rabbit has 1.2 kg of meat that 465 per rabbit net gain. Assuming each snare catches an average of 3 rabbits, we have to substract 30 minutes = 62,5 calorie for crafting the snare plus 30 minutes x 2 = 125 calories for harvesting a gut with bare hands divided by 3 = 62,5 calorie from that rabbit.

So we can say that the average rabbit caught by a snare is a net 400 calorie gain at Cooking I and Harvesting I. Assuming a 4000 calorie lifestyle we need 10 rabbits a day to maintain well fed, which will also take us 1.2 kg x 0.25 hours x 10 rabbit + (10 rabbit / 3) * (0.5 hours crafting snare + 0.5 hours harvesting gut) = 6.3 hours per day of harvesting meat, and harvesting the required guts for then crafting the snares.

If we repeat the above calculations with Cooking V and Harvesting V (late game) we end up with

450 * 1,25 - 31.25 = 530,25 calories per kilogram or 1,2kg x 530,25 = 636,3 calories per rabbit minus (62,5 + (0.5 hours x 2 x 125 cal x 0.7)) / 3 = 50, so each rabbit is an average 586,3 calories. Assuming our 4000 calorie lifestyle thats 7 rabbits a day and 1.2 kg x 0.125 hours x 7 rabbit + (7 rabbit / 3) * (0.5 hours crafting snare + 0.5*0.7 hours harvesting gut) = 2.56 hours a day.

This of course hasn't factored in guts/pelts you would use for other purposes. It also hasn't factored in the amount of firewood you require, which can become the actually challenging factor when staying in a place for a longer time. But it shows that by just defaulting to the easily and (practically) indefinitely maintainable hacksaw you can actually make a decent living once you have a decent array of traps, especially once you level up your skills.

Edited January 14, 2020 by jeffpeng

[acada]

To my previous post. I placed two test traps. One indoor and one outdoor outside the rabbit area. Now I came back to inside one after 30-40 days. And it was standing inside stating RUINED. So you can of course place a trap inside house, but it can become ruined after while.

[odizzido]

Man, eating 12kg of rabbit meat every day at a minimum. Our character must have massive, massive poops. Just mountains of poop every day. No wonder bathroom duties aren't in the game.

[peteloud]

My main reason for catching rabbits is for the pelt for making and repairing the rabbit hats and mitts.   (I mostly play long Stalker games.)  The meat is usually superfluous and usually makes an unsightly mess.  After a while I get sick of the meat lying around so spend a few hours cooking the rabbit meat just to tidy up the area.

[Guest jeffpeng]

On 5/17/2020 at 7:55 AM, odizzido said:

Man, eating 12kg of rabbit meat every day at a minimum. Our character must have massive, massive poops. Just mountains of poop every day. No wonder bathroom duties aren't in the game.

Let's just say it is not recommended to spend you life this way. A healthy diet does expressivly not include 12 kg of anything.

[ajb1978]

On 5/17/2020 at 12:55 AM, odizzido said:

Our character must have massive, massive poops. Just mountains of poop every day.

And now you know why there are prybars by the toilets sometimes.  All you need a little leverage.

[Abby]

On 5/17/2020 at 6:01 AM, peteloud said:

My main reason for catching rabbits is for the pelt for making and repairing the rabbit hats and mitts.   (I mostly play long Stalker games.)  The meat is usually superfluous and usually makes an unsightly mess.  After a while I get sick of the meat lying around so spend a few hours cooking the rabbit meat just to tidy up the area.

I play similarly except I catch rabbits for the gut to make more fishing line as fish is my main source of food.

[piddy3825]

Sometimes things just dont go like you expect them too....

 

 

Sometimes your results exceed your expectations...