ducks not flying

[RidgeBack69]

I'm not seeing any duck in the air. Not that thy are not breaking there are none except for a few that spawn already in the water

Sorry spoke too soon thy just took longer than usual.

[Terzi1985]

I've been waiting almost an hour to get one pintail. Blaaaaaaaah. I liked duck hunting a lot when it came out first but these days it's the this is the most boring hunting the game has to offer. Just sit around, do all the magic tricks, run around the thent counterclockwise, shoot in the air to get those birds moving again, keep calling into the emptyness, wait a littlebit more, wait a lot more... It's just hours of sitting and sitting with so little action, when those birds finally come, it's like 1/6 times that any of the birds break from the flock.

I got so fed up that I bought even more of those darn decoys, now I'm having around 50 decoys on the water total... Still by far the most boring hunting this game has to offer.

EDIT: not to mention, my dog got stuck on the blind, kept on running agains a corner for 10minutes and spooking everything that even tried to come down, had to go back to the tent, put the dog back to inventory and take with me again to finally get him off the tent. Also two times when the dog brings me a bird, the bird just catapults into the horizon... Bye bye... Waiting for those blablablablaaa messages from the Doc when I'm done with the hunt.

[Corsaire31]

I never tried duck hunting as I'm not interested ( too much stuff to buy and I don't like sitting and waiting in general - I would quit after 10 minutes ) . But reading your post a question comes to my mind : If you complain it's so boring, why do you keep buying decoys and sit there waiting instead of doing something else ?

[Terzi1985]

I must be a bit m**ochist. Well... I liked it a lot back then when there was constant rate of action. And since those decoys are on sale now, I thought I give a one last change for duck hunting and get some more of those decoys I only have few there, just to make sure it's not just my setup why I get so little of pintails and gadwalls. Maybe those few extra decoys did something since after a 1hour and 30 minutes of waiting I finally got some pintails coming down and got 4 shot too.

I admit it, I have put way too much money into something that totally isn't what it used to be when I made most of the purchases. And I feel somewhat betrayed about it, as I said I liked duck hunting back then when when it actually had plenty of action, back then I happily put all that money into it, but it ain't worth it anymore.



Maybe it's littlebit like roe hunting in hemmeldal. No matter what devs say that they haven't reduced the numbers and bla bla bla. I strongly disagree. Bowhunting roes in Hemmeldal was my favourite thing in this game, I had 6-8 sweet spots there with all the treestands and tents, that setup quaranteed good amount of roes when moving from a sweetspot to another. On the best hunts I got +30 roes on a single 3-4hour hunt, those were the best times I ever had with the game. But now... All empty. ALL OF THOSE sweet spot are dead quiet these days. If I go through all of those spots moving from one to another, I get around 10 roes max but NEVER a full herds anymore, just lone roes wondering around themselves. Needless to say that I've taken down almost all of those treestands and gave up on what I loved the most in this game. No matter what the devs say for excuse, statistics don't lie. Hemmeldal is half empty compared to what it was and that is a statistic fact based on hundreds and hudreds of hunts there, roe hunting in VDB has changed too, I only get a fraction of the numbers I was used to harvesting.

[Corsaire31]

Well I guess each one of us has his own concept of having fun with this game. Sitting in a treestand for 3 hours and kill 30 roe deers would be totally boring for me, probably why I never bought one. I like the Hemmeldal map very much for its landscapes, and after two hours of wandering around its mountains, I usually come back with more screenshots than trophies... ( usually a couple of reindeers, a moose or a brown bear or both on lucky days, but I only shoot big ones )

[Terzi1985]

I forgot to say that even with the treestands there, about half of the time I was stalking them on the ground too, just cathing one by one trying not to spook others, sneaking and trying to maneuvering amongst the roes while picking them up one by one, one bad shot and they are all fleeing. That was propably the most fun times I've had with the game, especially with longbow.

I guess things have changed so much in many ways in a few years that that kind of stalkhunting amongst a herd of roe deers would be impossible anyway these days. They also seem to be much tougher now, a shot that dropped one on it's feet back then, might result a few seconds of fleeing before dying and that's enough to spook others anyway. It's definitely a harder specie to "massmurder" these days and perhaps it's better this way in the end.
But I still feel there's much less roes in the Hemmeldal now.

[Corsaire31]

I only started playing the game a few months ago, and wherever there are roe deers ( Hemmeldal, Hirschfelden or Val des Bois ), I never met yet a herd of roe deers, most of the time they are alone or sometimes I find a couple, male and female together. I don't hunt them specially, except if a nice trophy crosses my path.

[Terzi1985]

This is going strongly off topic but hope it doesn't matter too much.

I've been with this game from 2012 if I remember correct. There has been so much major changes during many years and lots and lots of small things continuously adjusted, one is perhaps those roe deers moving in smaller numbers these days, couple of years ago there were sometimes big herds like 10+ roes in a area of few hundred meters, it was a paradise to stalk and bowhunt them but surely it's much more realistic now. Roe deer are actually the second most harvested species on my list, waiting to get 1000 moose and 1000 roe deer harvests unlocked in a few weeks, a milestone I've been waiting a looooooong time.

The game is propably in many many ways more realistic than ever before but sometimes it's hard to adjust myself with the everchanging game. In such a long time playing this, I have kind of a got used to some certain ways of hunting and getting a certain amount of harvests on every hunt with those old tricks, and when the game has evolved, those harvest numbers have gone down and down when animal numbers have been adjusted and their behaviours have been tweaked. I guess I'll just have to adapt to it, gone are those days of easy mass harvesting. I don't play anywhere near as much as I used to back in days, and I have already stopped competing so much and moved towards just enjoying more of nice time with the game and having enjoyable experiences every now and then when the game throws in something totally new that surprises me. But many times these special events gets me into a "GOTTA GET IT DONE" mode.

[JBreyer]

I've been waiting almost an hour to get one pintail. Blaaaaaaaah. I liked duck hunting a lot when it came out first but these days it's the this is the most boring hunting the game has to offer. Just sit around, do all the magic tricks, run around the thent counterclockwise, shoot in the air to get those birds moving again, keep calling into the emptyness, wait a littlebit more, wait a lot more... It's just hours of sitting and sitting with so little action, when those birds finally come, it's like 1/6 times that any of the birds break from the flock.

It never crossed your mind that the problem is with you and not the ducks? How can it be that I shot 2,100 ducks in like 11 days and you're having such a major problem? In the best hunts I even got over 150 kills. Just the fact that you claim that they break away from the flock 1 out of 6 times tell me that your setup is already wrong to begin with. I also wonder whether you call the proper way.

[Terzi1985]

No need to be rude but the point was, I too used to have way better result with the exact same setups and places, and that's exactly what I was talking about. Been there with the ducks from day1, got hundreds of mallards in matter of days back then on the grazy duck massacre Xmas event. I believe I still have the basic idea how it works and how to call them and how to get them coming more often, how to get them on the air if they have landed somewhere elsewhere and that's causing the skies to be empty and so on... Also no problems with geese whatsoever, except their teleporting.

One thing I've noticed too few days ago, the area where I've been keeping my setup and blinds now for a long while, the area has been changed within some updates (perhaps for the dogs to work better), you can walk now almost all around on the water near my blinds, the area wasn't like that at all before. That may have very well affected and changed the birds landing behaviour on that setup. Right now I very little interest to move the setup to anothre place or reorganize the whole setup just to try what it does.

Also, just to mention, one well known thing or issue is that the number of bears on baits have gone down a LOT, hogs too. Used to get 10-15 blackies with ease on certain time, now we're getting propably about half of that on same time frame. Does that mean that it's my personal problem, that I'm suddenly being so bad at doing the same thing that I've been much more succesful at before? All I'm saying is the game is changing all the time and many times those changes result more waiting and less action for the players.