For those who have never hunted

[Ashkeldir]

If you've never hunted, or at least, never hunted deer, I am confident that you will find these tips useful.

There is a major difference between hunter (including humans) and prey animals I'm going to talk a bit about.

Hunters tend to have both eyes facing forward, so they can judge distance, and see movement they are following/tracking/stalking.

Prey tend to have eyes to the sides of their heads, so they can better see movement around them and know when to run.

Deer are prey animals, and they know it!

They can see a long way, and they can smell a long way. They can easily spot movement from a couple of hundred yards off, depending, of course, on the line of sight to that movement. Camouflage doesn't make you invisible unless you are perfectly still, unless you've already been seen. Then you may have time to get a shot off if you move very slowly, but preferably don't move at all. If an animal is spooked because it thinks it saw something, it tends to run less far than if you stand up and confirm it's fears.

They can spot you a long way off if you are walking standing straight.

Another very important tip is something counter intuitive to those who have played shooter type games.

Patience is the key to hunting. That means walking, preferably crouched (or go prone if you think it necessary - you'll learn when that is the case), and stopping quite often.

Timing and your angle of view are crucial.

Just because you can't see the deer 40 feet behind the trees in front of you, or off to your side, doesn't mean it isn't there. Deer are extremely well camouflaged. Besides their coloring, when facing towards or away from you, they have a very slim profile - slim enough that you won't see them behind most average sized trees. And if there are a few trees between you and them, you may not see them because of the angle. After all, their antlers look like branches!

There could be one 40 meters to your side, but you won't know it is there until it is too late (or not at all) if you don't take your time to stop and look around and it takes off because it sees or smells you.

Your line of sight changes in the woods, every few steps - because there is no 'line' of trees (they weren't 'planted' in a straight line - they grow all over the place), it matters how often you stop and look around. Try it out, you'll see what I mean - in one spot, you'll see something at a distance that you can't see from 10 feet in front of, or behind that same spot. What you can and can not see constantly changes as you walk, and all it takes is that one second, that one step, to see the deer, and hope he hasn't seen you yet. That tends to happen when you aren't expecting it. That is part of what makes the hunt exciting.

Patience, walking slowing, and your viewing angle/line of sight -- those are some of the most important factors a wise hunter knows. Timing is something we don't have any control over, but it ties in with patience. Sometimes you spend an hour trying to find something, anything, and you can't see a thing, and it's all because the deer you're looking for haven't walked to where you are, at that moment, or they have already left the area so long before you that there were no tracks/signs for you to follow.

Don't get discouraged, patience pays off. Walk a little ways, stop, look around - and I don't mean for 2 seconds, at least, not every time. Stop and watch and you may see something off in the distance walking. Deer don't walk 24 hours a day. They walk a bit, stop, eat, walk some more, and often they stop just to look around and listen. This comes back to the angle/line of sight you have. If you've read this far, you'll have an advantage that others who have never hunted and haven't read this may not have. Experience is the best teacher.

Good luck, and safe harvesting!

[MonacoSteve]

A perfect short tutorial - for IRL hunters as well as those that will play the game! Thanks for it, Ashkeldir. Good idea! Should also directly go to the "post-launch forum", if such an forum one is going to be set up in near future ...

[Ashkeldir]

Danke schoen

I hope these will carry over - maybe they will just rename it? Or maybe nothing will change.

[Ashkeldir]

I should add that if the deer doesn't run away as soon as it looks in your direction, it is because it hasn't confirmed it has seen movement. It may believe it has, and that isn't always enough to make it run.

That's part of what adds to the difficulty of hunting deer.

This isn't like a shooter game where they will start shooting at you - they'll just run away - and you may never even know they spotted you, or that there was a deer there, because they aren't going to stick around to find out what that movement they saw could be - they don't care. In their mind, it probably isn't a deer, and it could be something that wants to eat them, and they're gone.

If you spot a deer looking in your direction, stay as still as possible, don't even raise your binoculars or your gun, because there's a good chance they'll see that and that's enough to make them bolt.

Remember the old military adage, if the enemy is in range, so are you. If you can see them with the naked eye, they can see you. And they are better camouflaged than we are, and very wary.

I can't stress that enough - well, maybe I just did

[kirisute]

to add to this IRL most deer (leats in the UK) will bolt run until they think they are safely out of harms way, then stop and stand. looking,smelling and listening to see what was the threat and then reacting again from there if the percieved threat is still there.
Ive seen deer in previous hunting sims react in the same way, bolting for cover then slowing and stopping...so if you do spook a deer, dont panic to start with...keep an eye on it, let it run and maybe it will stop and give you a second chance! hopefully The Hunter will pikc up on this as well!

[LitheiumCell]

This tip in RL has helped me lots, might apply to in-game as well, try and stay in the shadows. Walking in sunlight will for sure make you stand out, you won't often see deer standing in bright sunlight and if you do most likely they will be sausage soon!!

[pgh94]

At 40, I'm new to hunting. I've always heard of "Buck Fever" But after reading these tips I'm starting to get butterfly's!
Thanks! I'm looking forward to the education.
Phil

[Ashkeldir]

At 40, I'm new to hunting. I've always heard of "Buck Fever" But after reading these tips I'm starting to get butterfly's!
Thanks! I'm looking forward to the education.
Phil

I'm glad you found it useful

Have a look at this article as well - you will get something from it :

viewtopic.php?f=31&t=1180

[LitheiumCell]

At 40, I'm new to hunting. I've always heard of "Buck Fever" But after reading these tips I'm starting to get butterfly's!
Thanks! I'm looking forward to the education.
Phil

My husband and I took a "Green Horn" as we call them out hunting with us. This fellow had just passed his hunter safety course and his Possession and Acquisition (PAL) licence courses. Both are requirements in Canada for first time hunters. The PAL is required to buy, sell, borrow a fire arm and for purchasing ammunition.
He had spent a lot of time at the range and had gone on a couple of hunts with us, without a gun to see what it was like. We were working a ravine when a nice big whitetail buck and a couple of smaller bucks came out of a thicket about half way down the ravine. My husband who was in the bottom of the ravine (I and the other fellow were on the top ridges) brought up his rifle and took aim at the largest one. I was watching my husband and not the deer or the other fellow. My husband brought down his rifle and called out to the other fellow telling him to stop. This confused me as he was, last I saw him at the top of the ridge. I moved my focus towards the deer that was half way down the side of the slop our friend was on and believe it or not he was RUNNING beside that buck!!!! When it jumped up it was a good 25 yards from any one of us, but he managed to catch up to it with a combination of running down the slop and his long legs (he was 6' 5" tall). Well my husband yelled twice and it didn't even faze our friend, so my husband took aim on one of the smaller bucks and fired dropping it in it's tracks. Our friend ran with that deer over the ridge and disappeared from site. About 30 seconds after losing site of him we heard 5 shots ring out. I went down to my husband who by this time was checking his deer to make sure it was dead. He said for me to go get our friend and have him go get the truck so we could get the deer out. I walked up the top of the ridge and saw our friend coming back towards the ravine. When he got to me he was NOT out of breath or any thing, I said we have to go get the truck so we can get the deer my husband shot. He looked at me kind of funny and said he didn't even hear a shot. I responded not even the ones you fired?? He said he did not shoot at all. I kind of just left it at that and said lets go meet my husband. We went back to where my husband was by now gutting his deer. Our friend just looked for a few seconds and then said to my husband when did you get that? I told my husband that I told our friend you shot one. My husband then asked our friend if he had hit the deer he was shooting at and he replied that he had not shot at all. My husband asked him to check his rifle for ammunition. He said don't have to never fired it, it's got 5 in it. My husband insisted that he do it.
He did and was really shocked it was empty and swore that he had loaded it when he left the truck. Needless to say at that point my husband asked him not to load the gun again, and said that he would go get the truck. That guy once he realized that he had gotten buck fever so bad he couldn't remember any thing from the time the deer went up until he was sitting in the truck about a half an hour, swore he would never carry a gun again. That was 15 years ago, he hunts with us all the time but has never carried a gun since.

Sorry got long winded there!!!

[sjc628]

Was he a track star in high school? Or doesn't he remember?