Scenthound behaving weird and much worse at tracking since last update

[HunterBooth]

Mine HAS helped me find some nice tropies that I might have lost, admittedly. But my dog is at Lvl 47.7 and he's just gotten progressively worse in the little aggravations as he closes in on the higher levels. Honestly, if it weren't for his backpack, I'd probably leave him in the kennel ... permanently! I get a lot more "?" than I did at lower levels. I'm getting more "ignoring my commands" where I get no response from the dog at all. The only way to stop him from running "helter skelter" is to go into crouch then stand up again. Many times when I use the "P" key [STAY] he ignores the command completely (no "?", no "!", no nuthin') until I hit the "K" key [SIT] first then he will respond to the "P" key command ... that is, until the next time he wants to ignore my [Stay] command. So, unless corrected by a dev, these features are some of what you guys may have to look forward to as you level up your "scent" dog.

He's proven to be a "blood" tracking dog and not a scent tracker. A scent tracker could follow tracks - except across water, of course - as long as the animal puts foot to earth; but, if an animal is not dead (ahead) and it has stopped bleeding, my dog promptly sits on his butt right after the first fleeing track that follows the last blood spatter and only subsequently moves when he's pushed by the HM border. I now consider this a "game feature" in that it tells me the quarry has only suffered a flesh wound, although Doc disagrees with me on this assessment consistently. I know this after tracking some of these "wounded" animals for thousands of meters and never again finding one blood track ... so, in this, my dog is smarter than I am.

On WrR I've actually watched my dog chase a wounded animal - and I mean right on its heels - until it finally drops. But in these cases, the wound WAS mortal, and the animal was still bleeding some. What I've described above is not limited to a small subset of the reserves ... my dog respects and treats me equally on all reserves (except the running an animal to death - that's only on WrR)

SUMMARY: Although he does occasionally find an animal I might have missed, I spend most of my hunts PO'd at him and most of his leveling up is now done when - or if - he responds to the "P", "K", and "J" key commands but I've resigned myself to putting up with the aggravation and irritation because he can carry stuff!
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EDIT: Forgot to mention ... as his levels increase, so does the distance he travels AFTER acknowledging ["!"] the [Stay] command when I administer while we're walking, sometimes by as much a 15 meters.

[LittleLeeloo]

Same here. Have one in lvl 37. Runs in circles and sometimes in the opposite direction of the wounded animal when tracking it. I have almost forgotten how hard it was to track sometimes until the last update

[TheSheWolf]

A scent tracker could follow tracks - except across water, of course

Just to point out--a real scenting dog will not be confused by water. It'd go up and down one side, cross and try to regain the track. Yet in-game the scent hounds lose it immediately now (they did NOT used to) as soon as the animal touches water. (I see this post is old, but hey!)

You're absolutely right, though, the dog's abilities have become garbage. Unusable really.

Can I ask those commenting:

Did you switch to another dog at any point?

I found that changing over to my Retriever may have been what triggered this. If I switch dog, the dog I'm changing to behaves as level 1. Then switching back, same thing. I made a couple posts about this but it'd be useful to have more info.

my dog has failed to track every single coyote that I have shot It fails all the time just before it sees the dead body

Also old, but in case anyone else notices this--if you're kneeling, the dog will "?" at the dead body, rather than bark. I'm not sure if it's deliberate or not.

[Mackie2112]

Ive had the issue that the Dog is now spooking everything. Level 20. Even laying down and myself prone. Dont know if maybe its the camo on the dog as that is the only thing I changed. I put the orange pack on him to see him better int he brush.

[HawkEye81]

Later hunts with my 42 scent hound
-3-4 times he blocked my shots (even tough the dog stays behind me while I'm walking, after I stop and go prone he's doing circles around me and block my shots, and this really sucks because sometimes you just don't have to much time to shoot, not to mention shooting a running animal. If he's blocking the shoot I have to go back to crouch again, wait until he moves away and tell him to stay and pray that he listen to he command and hope that animal is still there...)
If I remember good in the stream they said this won't happen again...It does! Normally after the player stops from running or walking the dog Shouldn't go in front of him no matter what !! The only times when the dog should be in front of the player is when he's tracking an wounded animal.
-He didn't manage to track all the wounded animals, some times he's finding them while other times he's acting completely nut's running all over and in all directions. Before the updates I had no problem with him finding animal with intestine/lung hit, so it's definitely bugged.
-Many times I have to give him the same command, 3 or even 4 times, for him to listen, and he's lvl 42, I forgot how obedient it was at a smaller lvl but now it's like he's getting worse and worse...
-I see no difference than before on him spooking animals (Yesterday in TGT I was staying crouch at around 50m from some elk females and my dog was coming from my back towards me and he spooked them) I had full TGT camo and I have no doubt that the dog spooked them, the elks spooked when the dog was getting closer to me...Same with the grizzly, I've noticed that if I walk/crouch I can get much closer tot hem but when I have the dog they spook from a bigger distance.
I truly hope they will manage to fix the dogs because now most of us are using them mostly for caring stuff... and this is not why we buyed them!

[gas56]

Has anyone here put a bug report in at all.
If my dog IRL acted like this it wouldn't be around very long.
Sorry but I won't support hunting dogs in theHunter until they start acting like hunting dogs because
a scent hound (coon dog) should track whether an animal is shot or not.

[VonStratos]

Has anyone here put a bug report in at all.
If my dog IRL acted like this it wouldn't be around very long.
Sorry but I won't support hunting dogs in theHunter until they start acting like hunting dogs because
a scent hound (coon dog) should track whether an animal is shot or not.

https://forum.thehunter.com/viewtopic.p ... 11#p944711
I don't know if count like a bug report, but the info and experience that we are getting with the scent hound is on that thread, and its on the dogs bugs section.

[mapache01]

Mine just refuse to track hog, yotes, deer and same as previous posts, level up got worse, I stop using it to track on level 27 and like Hunterbooth I use just as extra bag for ammo/bow/camping supp/callers so i can carry a TS.

[gas56]

Has anyone here put a bug report in at all.
If my dog IRL acted like this it wouldn't be around very long.
Sorry but I won't support hunting dogs in theHunter until they start acting like hunting dogs because
a scent hound (coon dog) should track whether an animal is shot or not.

https://forum.thehunter.com/viewtopic.p ... 11#p944711
I don't know if count like a bug report, but the info and experience that we are getting with the scent hound is on that thread, and its on the dogs bugs section.

Yes they do count, and there are so many dog bugs that it's enough fixing to keep their tails wagging...

[wvmtman59]

I hope so because they are defiantly broke mine just half tracked a brown bear that was lung shot that went maybe 60m then just stood and pointed at it for me no bark nothing. Mine is level 25 was always great would track a wounded animal clear across the map to find before.