Big Fat Heavy Animals

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gas56
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Big Fat Heavy Animals

Post by gas56 »

I just thought it would be a good idea if some animals were like rare animals in spawning and were just a lot fatter than normal as some cases IRL happens.
*As of 2015, the heaviest whitetail deer that has been recorded had a field weight of 402 pounds. It is estimated that this animal had a live weight of 511 pounds.
This deer was shot and killed in the state of Minnesota in 1926. Carl Lenander Jr. is the hunter who is credited with this record, and to date it has not been broken.
*The heaviest whitetail ever shot was killed by a bow-hunter, John Annett of Ontario, in 1977. The deer field dressed 431 pounds on government-certified scales. That would have given it an estimated live weight of more than 540 pounds. However, reports indicate the buck was butchered before Canadian authorities could inspect it.

Also it is not that uncommon to see Whitetail female deer push the scales at 200+ pounds as also with other female animal species extremely heavier
than normal. In the game it would make sense to have these fat models to look the part not just weight added,.. with big bellies and body mass as well.
A trophy would not always have to be the males of the species and a full body mount in the Trophy Lodges would look great of these rares or fat animals.
Now imagine in the game if you actually got a fat rare albino/piebald/melanistic animal?
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Nathan112244
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Re: Big Fat Heavy Animals

Post by Nathan112244 »

It all depends where it is also, an average buck in Texas weights less then an average doe here in Ontario even though does typically weigh less then bucks
(on average).
A super fat deer in Texas can only be like 250lbs when here in Canada we see those all the time, especially in a place like Saskatchewan.
So i feel like it all depends where the maps are and whats the average whitetail weight there and what would be considered a "super fat" deer.

Texas:
The average field-dressed weight of a mature male deer (4+year old deer) on poor range in the Hill Country is around 80 pounds. The average weight of mature deer on a healthy range should be in excess of 105 pounds. Bucks on good range should average close to the weights in the sidebar.

Ontario:
The weight of Ontario whitetail bucks can reach above 136kg (300lbs). However, mature, healthy bucks on average weigh between 63kg and 114kg (140lbs and 250lbs), bucks usually being larger than does. April is when antlers start appearing on bucks.
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Elrique64
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Re: Big Fat Heavy Animals

Post by Elrique64 »

Where I grew up in North Dakota, we have both Mulies and Whitetails. It would be rare to see a Mulie hitting the 300# mark alive, but quite common for WT bucks to hit that weight field dressed. I shot a 172 gross 6x6 WT that with the head and the hide off and hanging on certified scales was 250#, putting the live weight into the 400 range easily. In the Dakotas and Minnesota, this is considered slightly above average weight. Then again, that part of the country is known for having some of the biggest body mass of all but one sub-species of Whitetails in NA.

That Lenander buck you mentioned above was shot on my grandpa's cousin's land. (So the land owner would have been my 3rd cousin?? the land is still in the family... And still has some monster WT's shot on it regularly.) I grew up with some of the Lenander grand and great grand kids. That buck, as well as the Ontario buck you mentioned above were both Dakota sub-species. That sub is known for having live weights commonly in the 300-350# range for mature, dominant bucks.

I was somewhat upset that Whitetails in the game are more like the smaller framed Texas sub-species than the Dakota or the Northern subs. Especially when you consider that WHI is supposedly based on the PNW of the US. (Most of Washington state doesn't have a large WT population. Those are generally found on teh estern side of t he state, which has more of a grasslands feel to it than a wooded type of feel. More like the Dakotas than West ern Washington's forested areas.) Even if you consider that it has Whitetails, the sub-species should be more like the larger framed/bodied Northern sub, then the smaller framed Texas. The Northern and Dakotas both stand much taller at the shoulder than the Texas. (3"-4" on average.) They are also wider through the chest and have a longer body. Having hunted all three subs through the years the first time I saw a Texas doe, I thought it was a large greyhound dog. It's body was so similar in shape and composition to a dog's I was seriously shocked I was looking at a deer. And I KNEW the differences from my studies of deer when my major was Wildlife Biology...

While I applaud the idea of having the massive bodies of the Northerns and Dakotas, just making them fat bellied isn't the real answer to your idea. The animals need to be longer in the body, taller, more massive necked and over-all just plain larger in every dimension to truly be one of those much heavier sub-species. That 172 I mentioned earlier in my post, when I first saw him, he didn't appear to have a neck. His shoulders looked like they went up all the way to his head Standing on all four legs his shoulders were taller than my waist. His body was almost 4 feet long from chest to rump. He wasn't big bellied, but was just plain massive compared to anything I had shot in Texas. And remember, he was just a touch above the average Dakota buck, meaning there were almost as many heavier than him harvested in a year as there were smaller than him...

Yeah, I like the idea, over-all. But the implementation needs a bit of tuning.
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Re: Big Fat Heavy Animals

Post by TheSheWolf »

Fascinating post, Elrique! Really need to read some of that stuff, I had no idea. I really love whitetails IRL, and I'm kinda sad at the smaller deer in-game. Not only that but their entire models, behavior etc could use a real rework. I'd play a hunting game that did perfect, realistic whitetails over one that did all species just "well" tbh.
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Re: Big Fat Heavy Animals

Post by Nathan112244 »

TheSheWolf wrote:Fascinating post, Elrique! Really need to read some of that stuff, I had no idea. I really love whitetails IRL, and I'm kinda sad at the smaller deer in-game. Not only that but their entire models, behavior etc could use a real rework. I'd play a hunting game that did perfect, realistic whitetails over one that did all species just "well" tbh.
Yeah i think everyone loves them, other then geese and ducks i wouldn't be surprised if they are the most harvested species season after season.
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gas56
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Re: Big Fat Heavy Animals

Post by gas56 »

Elrique64 wrote:Yeah, I like the idea, over-all. But the implementation needs a bit of tuning.
Well the tuning you are asking for is probably not going to happen as I mentioned in another post that modifying game animals in the game
is going to be a "Far Cry" away from actual deer statistics, behavior, and facts of a species IRL.....
So even slight modification that could be done like Body Shape & Mass as I stated above would be only subjected to random spawn numbers
as rares & Non-typicals work on the maps they are found on.
So it wouldn't be like every time you went hunting you would come across a "Fat/Big Body Mass" animal, and my suggestion is not just including the Deer Species but
all animal species that could fit this Body Character also such as Bears, Hogs, etc.
Sure,.. the animals in the game can have some heavy weights, but there is definitely IRL Body Character that is very noticeable on really heavy animals and this
is what I think could add a plus to the game without that much tuning and time consumption making them more possible that the Devs may accept working on something
less demanding like this.
Have a good 1....... :D
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Elrique64
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Re: Big Fat Heavy Animals

Post by Elrique64 »

Actually, Gas, I don't think it would be all that hard. The models are already in the game for the species in question. Just need to scale them up a bit, increase the top end weights to fit the new scaled bodies and there it is.

That's the thing I was trying to impress on you with the previous post, those heavy deer aren't fat or pot-bellied. They are just plain MASSIVE. I've actually seen WT bucks in the NE corner of North Dakota you would swear were elk, except for the colorations.. Just because of their SIZE. When you come around a snag of fallen trees and see a WT buck eye to eye, and his head is as tall as yours, you KNOW the thing is just plain BIG! That's what these massive bucks are, just plain BIG! Everything about them is just bigger. (Think an average sized person standing next to Andre the Giant... That's what we're really talking about here...)

So scale the model up 20-25%, and increase the top weights the same or maybe a little more. (So a MASSIVE WT would be 120Kg-140KG or so.) It doesn't have to be huge in terms of antlers, because the antler sizes of the Dakotas aren't that much bigger/smaller than the Northerns or Texas or Virginia subs... (individuals may be larger depending on the food source, but over-all antlers are comparable. And that's not a factor in the game in any case...) Make the chances of these MASSIVES as rare as the supposedly rarish albino/pie/melan, or perhaps as rare as the not quite so rare Non-typicals, and you have another rare/oddity that no one can win an EW contest with, but could be fun to have a UHC contest with....

That's why I said your idea needed some tweaking... It's tweaking the models and weights, not making whole new models to fit something new. It's modifying what we already have in game to make it larger.
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gas56
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Re: Big Fat Heavy Animals

Post by gas56 »

Elrique64 wrote:Actually, Gas, I don't think it would be all that hard. The models are already in the game for the species in question. Just need to scale them up a bit, increase the top end weights to fit the new scaled bodies and there it is.

That's the thing I was trying to impress on you with the previous post, those heavy deer aren't fat or pot-bellied. They are just plain MASSIVE.

That's why I said your idea needed some tweaking... It's tweaking the models and weights, not making whole new models to fit something new. It's modifying what we already have in game to make it larger.
I understand completely what you're trying to say and the thing I actually was trying to get across was an idea can be subjected by EW when making modifications.
I've worked with 3d programs and have made models and modified them myself, so I really didn't think that it is too necessary to explain in how it is done in detail.
Just conveying an idea about big fat animals........ :lol:
I'm from Northeast Ohio and we get some really huge body sized deer here also,.. also a lot of record book bucks.
This thought like I said in my last post though was not just about medium deer, it's about all animals,...
and some are just plain big & fat,.. just like some people get.... :shock:
But this is what I would like to see happen in the game...... Just a few animals I put together,.. but I think you will see better what I mean....
There is no mistaking big fat animals when you see them........ ;)
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