Drag Carcass

[Nate Roth]

I'd really like the ability to move a carcass. I often have a fire set up and kill something. Now I must make a new fire if I want to harvest it. 

A movement de-buff and calorie consumption penalty could be added while dragging to balance it. 

[Dirmagnos]

Using fire to kill hostile wildlife is already an exploit, since it makes hunting completely effortless. Adding features to make it even easier would only ruin game even further. Currently moving campfire doesnt even require additional matches, but just a torch.

[sms726837]

I think spending much time to take apart a carcass in front of a cabinet is stupid. I want to drag the carcass into the safe place. 

[Nate Roth]

I'm not aware of these exploits. However, I don't see its relevance. I want to move the body of something already dead to my shelter/fire. 

How would this his inadvertenly increase exploitability?

[SteveP]

23 hours ago, Nate Roth said:

I'm not aware of these exploits. However, I don't see its relevance. I want to move the body of something already dead to my shelter/fire. 

How would this his inadvertenly increase exploitability?

Using a fire to stop a prowling bear from advancing is not technically an "exploit" since it is a designed behaviour of the game.

I do agree that it would make sense to be able to move a rabbit carcass to a more favourable location for harvesting, out of the wind and closer to a fire. It only makes sense as this is what you would do in real life. Moving a deer carcass (depending upon weight) is much more effort albeit easier with the guts and offal removed. The bear, the one you need plenty of time and wind shelter and fire to safely harvest, cannot be moved because of it's extreme weight.

These limitations are all part of the game; it can't really be made too much easier. I think a very important lesson is that you should always draw the bear into a favourable location for butchering it. It's not that hard!! Choosing the right spot and how to approach the bear; that's the tricky part!

[Dirmagnos]

It may not be technically an exploit, but it makes it extremely easy to hunt aggressive prey that otherwise may take some skill and planning.

And i do agree that rabbits should be transportable, while dragging wolf corpse, not to mention deer or, god forbid, bear corpse thru snow would be severely pushing the limit of the game. Especially considering that player character is an anorexic who can barely carry 40 kg of items, including equipped clothes.

I think that fire should act as wildlife repellent, but it shouldnt be a 100%, so that wolf have a 20-30% chance to ignore it and lunge at player, wounded animal would have 60-70% chance to attack player even with fire present. After all they are unusually aggressive in the game.

[SteveP]

13 hours ago, Dirmagnos said:

It may not be technically an exploit, but it makes it extremely easy to hunt aggressive prey that otherwise may take some skill and planning.

And i do agree that rabbits should be transportable, while dragging wolf corpse, not to mention deer or, god forbid, bear corpse thru snow would be severely pushing the limit of the game. Especially considering that player character is an anorexic who can barely carry 40 kg of items, including equipped clothes.

I think that fire should act as wildlife repellent, but it shouldnt be a 100%, so that wolf have a 20-30% chance to ignore it and lunge at player, wounded animal would have 60-70% chance to attack player even with fire present. After all they are unusually aggressive in the game.

When I was in the services we carried packs that did not exceed 25kg or so. That's in excess of 60 pounds. When I worked stuking bales of hay as a teen, it was extremely difficult to manhandle 50lb hay bales. If you quarter a small deer, you can carry the quarters around but not with a pack on.

If you have a torch and a wolf is near you paused at his attack radius, if you move even slightly toward that wolf, it will attack. What you are doing is using the fire to get the animal to pause long enough to draw a bead on it. There is risk in that. Bullets are a limited resource and I would prefer not to shoot the wolves at all since it exhausts the supply of bullets. Those bullets are necessary to permit the player to get a bow and arrow and to craft arrows and I suppose, to become proficient with the use of that weapon.

Take as an example, hunting for deer on Kodiak island or similar places where the grizzlies are active. Grizzlies are the top predator in those regions so when they hear gunfire and smell blood, it's only a matter of time before they arrive on the scene looking for either a delicious gut pile or anything else (including hunters and their quarry). I've done some research on grizzly hunting and the recommendation is to use a .340 calibre magnum rifle or LARGER on grizzlies. A .303 Enfield can kill a grizzlie from a distance however if that bear gets close to you, the .303 simply does not have the necessary stopping power to halt a charging grizzly in its tracks. If you can get a lung shot, sure you can take the bear down and it will be immobilized in about 30 seconds to 2 minutes. You're not always going to get that shot. Take a look at the postings I've made under terminal ballistics in the Off Topic forum concerning the so called hydraulic shock or hydro-static shock kill. This is when the energy of the bullet is so great that it stops the heart of the animal by creating a shock to the nervous system. Included are the URLs of some videos and hunting websites including the Alaska wildlife association IIRC.

Now if you get a bear to approach you and you get it to stop advancing because you have a fire going, you are going to have the opportunity to make a shot at close range between the eyes into the brain for the instant kill. Our assumption in the game is that even after the bear has been shot, it is still not going to charge because of the fire. In real life, a black bear is 90% of the time going to flee. The black bear is not a top predator and as a rule, avoids humans. If it has been changed by the geomagnetic event to loose its fear of humans to be more aggressive, then whatever the developers decide is reasonable. Maybe the bear is going to attack after being wounded. We don't know.

I have spent some time trying to shoot the bears without the use of fire. It's very difficult to judge the correct distance to shoot and often that bear will rear up about half a second before you are ready to shoot it. I don't know where you should aim at the rearing bear but probably a lung shot or a spinal column shot if you can make it would result in a quick kill. Without fire, that bear is going to charge and severely maul or kill you.

Let's suppose you want to draw the bear back to your base at Hibernia; there are lots of ice traps that will prevent you from moving where you will get stuck with that bear advancing on you. I know the safest route up to the whaling plant and others could too, if they watch my youtube series. There are other places that I've tried where you simply get stuck in the ice or in the trash surrounding the plant. Most of my work has been on Desolation Point but I know the other regions fairly well. On TWM, there are countless caves and bear dens that make an ideal location to have wind shelter for a fire for harvesting the bear. On Mystery Lake, there is a small bear den not far from the Trapper's Cabin that has pretty good wind shelter. If you lure the bear into the ravines behind the Camp Office, there's a pretty good chance of having wind shelter on one side or the other of the ravine. If you could count on the wind staying in one direction for about 12 hours (doesn't happen in TLD but it does in real life) you can find spots there to have wind shelter.

On Coastal Highway, I'd have to think about the best place to harvest a bear. I gather the bear won't enter a fishing hut but it also doesn't like to come in front of the door to the hut either so it's hard to get a shot. I believe there is a bear den near one of the islands that might be a reasonable ambush location. Up in the hills, there are few shelter places; perhaps behind one of the mobile trailers or near a cabin. I and others that I know, have only ever used caves or dens for the fire trap for the bear. It seems reasonable that if you were out in the open, you would need 3-4 fires to prevent the bear circling around to attack you. The bear certainly has the intelligence to circle around if you are up on a high spot you thought it could not scale. I learned this to my intense displeasure while trying to shoot the bears from the heights of rocks around the Trapper's Cabin.

Getting back on topic, I think it's perfectly reasonable to be able to pick up a dead rabbit to take home for processing. If it is felt that makes it too easy then the current system works but in my experience, it has been difficult to get enough rabbits to survive more than subsistence. It's the same with fishing; you can't build up a large enough inventory of fishes to last more than a day at most. In real life, you should be able to harvest enough fish in a week to last most of the winter by drying and freezing them and protecting them from predators. You need to build a bear platform or keep dogs to warn of bears and you still need a pretty good cache. see "meat cache" on youtube for lots of ideas and alternatives. Fans of Life Below Zero are probably familiar with Glen Villaneuve's drying rack. (see video below)
 

 

[cekivi]

Good points. Just my own two cents:

I would never shoot a bear in the head. Their brain is surrounded by a thick skull. A .303 wouldn't guarantee penetration and an instant kill. I'd empty the entire clip into it's chest cavity and just hope it's dead by the time it closes the distance to my position. Not a sure thing  

You can totally move a deer on your own. I wouldn't recommend it (those buggers are heavy!). A large, gutted white tail deer will weigh in at around 100 - 120 lbs in my experience. I'm not familiar with BC's deer species but I suspect they're heavier since they should be larger? That being said, if you had rope you can tie up the antlers and slowly drag the deer (it would be like a furry makeshift sled) or, as @SteveP points out, you can quarter the animal with the hacksaw and move it around easily (each piece would be around 30-40 pounds). Provided you have the time to saw the deer up

Drying fish would be really, really nice. Or even being able to make salt fish.

Pocketing rabbits is a no-brainer. Hopefully it gets added one of these days.

[SteveP]

The hatchet would probably be my tool of choice for quartering a white tail. There are mule deer as well as white tail in B.C.

A video on how to quarter a deer. Note this deer is hung and would require a rope, strong cordage and perhaps a mechanical advantage to hoist it (windlass device? logs to wind rope around?

 

Without coolers, toboggans, car hoods or plastic bags we probably want to leave the hide on the quarters. I guess the player does have his ruck sack.. These videos are separating the legs from the ribs and backbone and hips. Some unethical hunters don't even bother to harvest an entire deer. Wasteful as well as unethical. I imagine in the bush, pressed for time, you might hoist your carcass up into a tree and tote back the quarters to hang and dry on the surface for preservation. Sort of depends if you want the hide in one piece or not. I suppose. If I had nothing else, I guess I would take the hide off and throw the meat on that and use it to skid the meat home.

 

When my dad hunted, he always brought the entire deer home hide on but gutted on the spot in the field. For an elk or moose, if I recall, it was quartered in the field with an axe and then brought home to hang, skin and butcher. You're not packing out an entire moose on your own! Dad used the snow mobile and sled for the job and me as helper to load it. Now you know why I want that dang block and tackle off the crane near the Hibernia Whale Processing Plant! ;-) I want to hang the bear from it! So maybe we could have choices for how to butcher the game with trade-offs. Hair or bone dust in the meat are definite risks but so is the chance of attracting other predators!

[Dirmagnos]

@SteveP

Did those 25kg bags included you clothes and everything that you had in your pockets ? And could you carry more ? And why there are bags made, including military ones, that can have 100+ l capacity and can carry 70+ kg of weight in them ?

Generally i have no problems with hunting. Bears i prefer to avoid, but simply for the reasons that i hate to waste a ton of good meat. Since there is no way to preserve it, i only take on bears when im getting low of food and have no immediate sources of it in vicinity(like wolves, that can be easily meleed with little effort). I never use that lame fire tactics and prefer to use terrain to my advantage and im not afraid to run away if things get hairy. Animals are surprisingly easy to confuse in the game, by simply running around rocks or houses. Not to mention another rather lame tactic of entering house thru one entrance, exiting thru another, going around and taking another potshot at the animal from better position.

[SteveP]

The back pack included compass, mess kit, spare clothes esp socks, sleeping bag, camo stick, poncho, water proof pants IIRC. I can't remember if we had spare boots or not. Dry feet is incredibly important! We also had to tote the FNC1, ammo clips with blanks, helmet, boots, bayonet and canteen on the web belt. Fire starting gear wasn't in our kit. Our rations were delivered to where we were camped every night while in the field and we carried our rations for the day as well if I recall. This was over 40 years ago now.

Here is a reference that indicates the grunts & special teams had to carry what was necessary at times, very heavy with ammo and water but a typical marching pack was 40 to 65 pounds (18-30 kg). Don't forget these also had aluminum frames.

https://ca.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070912144456AAj5PK8

I only did one summer of ROTP before I figured out the military wasn't the career for me. That's about as much as we are permitted to discuss on this forum. No politics or religion or the ethics of hunting.

[menaceR32]

I have heard stories of large bears getting hit with a round and it deflecting off the animal's skull.

It would be terrifying trying to stop a charging bear only to see your rounds bounce off it's skull. I sort of always imagined that was going on when I got a head shot on a bear and failed to drop it in TLD.

Of the 12 or so bears I have killed in this game I would say 3 dropped from a single shot to the head at a distance of 30 meters tops.