How to exhaust your local rabbit population..

[Scyzara]

Well, I actually just wanted to do something halfway meaningful during my last few endgame-days and thus decided to have a little look at the rabbit population exhaustion mechanics. (Yes, you CAN exhaust these populations. I've never notized that myself until it happened to me during this experiment.^^)

Experimental setup:

The snares were placed on the northern slope of Jackrabbit Island (fittingly ) above rabbit tracks.

I always placed 10 snares during the whole experimental period (which was 28 days long). Whenever a snare broke, I replaced it with a new one. I only checked and harvested the snares between 10 AM and 11 AM to avoid spawn time problems. (side note: I had placed 3 snares for dozens of days before without ever exhausting the rabbit population.)

I just threw my numbers in excel, attached please find the results.

What we can (probably) learn from this experiment:

- it IS possible to exhaust a local rabbit population if you place enough snares

- even if you screw up and have exhausted your population, it recovers after a while

(at least once, maybe even more often. Unfortunately, I could'nt continue to monitor the population for more than 28 days because I died. Endgame and stuff. ^^)

- in an exhausted population, you're most likely not going to catch more than 1 rabbit per day, if at all.

- this last assumption of mine is more or less just a guess, but I believe that the game actually makes a roll (whether a rabbit is caught or the snare breaks) only for those snares that could theoretically catch a rabbit. If the population is exhausted and only maximal one or two rabbits could be caught anyway, the other 8-9 snares cannot break. Nice detail @whoever programmed that.

And the moral of the story: Don't be too greedy, kids. Never place too many snares at once.

[toebar]

nicely done!

[AmericanSteel]

I normally place three snares in an area for two to three days, at two locations. I then switch to other locations. For instance, I usually put out two sets of snares around the PV Farmstead (3 and 3). I then put a set near the farmstead and the far field of the farmstead near the main road (again 3 and 3). I then put out a set in two areas around the barn (again 3 and 3). Wait a day or two and repeat the cycle.

I usually catch 2 to 3 rabbits a day in each set, which keeps me more food that I can shake a stick at. If I just slow my cycle around the farmstead (and hibernated) I think I could live off rabbit meat indefinitely. Not to mention you can usually bag a wolf/deer or get the remains of a downed deer near the road. This is even easier in the field between the barn and the farmstead, but the wolves on stalker run in packs so you have to be really careful.

Word to the OP! Very nicely done!