Dog

Share your dog-related ideas and suggestions here
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Phoenix62
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Dog

Post by Phoenix62 »

I would like take a dog .Any suggestion ?
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DYEUZ
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Re: Dog

Post by DYEUZ »

From what i read , the Retriever is the best choice .

The Scent Hound / German Pointer are either bugged , not doing their job or worthless.

I have a retriever and works good .

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Andhii
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Re: Dog

Post by Andhii »

IMO The pointer is the best dog hands down. It will find you animals, birds and rabbits right off the bat, foxes/goose/coyotes after a small level up grind and then deers/felines after a big grind. (see wiki for more info)

Downside is the lenghty cooldown you have to put up which feels like forever when hunting rabbits, but the more you level up your dog the shorter the cooldown for next search command will be. Another downside is that all the animals you can send your dog after are "shared" behind 3 different commands. This means for example if you are hunting cottontails in loggers point, which the dog is great for, the dog will find you the nearest rabbit or pheasant which can be annoying if you don't want the dog to go after the pheasant. It's even worse when hunting for deer or felines, as the dog often seems to find the "wrong" animal you're after.

Retriver is handy but not that usefull. It will fetch you animals that can't otherwise be reached or are bugged. (ducks in deep water or a duck that got shot at same time by 2 different players thus being bugged in the air)
I don't use my retriver unless there's a bugged animal simply because the dog is awfully slow. Retriver will run to the animal and then sloooowly make it's way back to you. There was also a bug that caused games to crash when the retriver was used, don't know if that's fixed.

The scent hound is by far the most useless dog of the 3 (my opinnion). It requires blood tracks to keep up with the wounded animal and even then can go way off-course before throwing up that question mark to indicate that hes lost again. My opinnion is that everyone should be able to track their own wounded animal to a certain degree and that's often way better what the scent hound can do for you. I'v put my nose against highly trained scent hounds in the game few times and always been at the kill way before the dog granted it makes it there at all.

But in the end you have to choose from the 3 the one that suits your needs/style.
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Sarroth
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Re: Dog

Post by Sarroth »

I'll just say a good day here. And that's basically my answer. :D

yeah i'm a bit biased :lol:
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Reggy
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Re: Dog

Post by Reggy »

Retriever works but is slow and ducks are bugged and will go flying away so harvest them before dog drops it. I always use him when hunting birds. You will see the bug if you use it. (Lvl 29)

Scent hound is good for when using a bow (animal always dies) and animal backtracks and you've got tracks all over but are not at a tracking level to see how old they are. If you have a high tracking skill then yeah they are mostly useless. When using a gun if the animal isn't going to die you will get the ? meaning they can't find it, is not going to die. Can save you lots of time trying to tracking it, but If you have high track levels you will almost always do better than the dog. If the animal runs 100M and drops dead, half the time the dog will ? on the last track in view of the downed animal. They need blood track first time only, after that you can put them on any track for that INJURED animal. (lvl 33)

Pointers for me at least seem hit or miss. Yes they may find an animal but you won't get close enough to identify/see it before you spook it usually or in my case. If you are rabbit hunting it will find birds, and vice versa. Have not leveled this one up very far (lvl 10) and rarely use it anymore.

If low skills in tracking I'd go with Scent hound, once you lvl up your skills he will be mostly useless, but I still find myself using him for animals I don't have good tacking skills with. Else I'd get Retriever, yes it's a bit slow in water but will get animals you can't see, like rabbits or birds in the grass or ducks in deep water. I'm lazy so I always use him when hunting birds or rabbits.
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Phoenix62
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Re: Dog

Post by Phoenix62 »

Thanks a lot all of you !
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Re: Dog

Post by muledeer »

German Pointer is the best ... level 42.
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Hawkeye
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Re: Dog

Post by Hawkeye »

They all can be useful, and all have their downfalls as well. I'll try to break them down a bit here.

Retriever - Great dog to own, as it allows you to remain in your blind and continue hunting while you send the dog out to retrieve the birds. He no longer spooks birds while he's out, so you don't have to worry about that. There are some situations where he is a must-have, such as when you shoot a duck that lands on the other side of deep water, or when you shoot one at long range with your 22 pistol. He'll save you a lot of time, and in some cases will find ducks that you wouldn't find on your own. He's also nice to have when you shoot those long range ptarmigans that can sometimes be difficult to find. Another great thing about the Retriever is that he's easy to feed dog treats, which allow you to speed up the training process by feeding right after a retrieval. The downfall of the Retriever is that there is a bug that occurs where he grabs a duck, but when he sets it down, it bounces off. You can tell this will happen as soon as he grabs it because it won't be solidly in the mouth. You can also help prevent this from happening by waiting until your floating ducks stop moving on the water before sending the Retriever...it doesn't ALWAYS work, but it will help. You can also keep this issue from affecting your hunt by staying in your blind when you give the Retrieve command. This helps because when your dog comes into the blind with the bouncing duck, the duck sort of teleports into the blind with him, allowing you to quickly harvest it before it starts to bounce away. In an average hunt where I take around 70 ducks, 4-5 of them will be bouncers. This doesn't happen with Canada Goose, Magpie Goose, or any of the Ptarmigans or Pheasants. Lastly, the Stamina starts out really low, so he takes quite a bit of leveling before he can hang out for an entire hunt. For this reason, I keep 3 of them for times when I binge hunt waterfowl, so I can rotate them out. I don't recommend this for everybody, but if you do it, wait for sales or promotions.

Scent Hound - The Scent Hound allows you to track wounded animals by setting him on the blood trail. Of course, the majority of the time, you can find the animals yourself. That being said, I have no doubt that the Hound has allowed me to find animals that I wouldn't have been able to find otherwise. If he finds you just one trophy or rare animal that you would have missed, then in my opinion, he's worth it. There are times when an animal doubles back on old tracks that can throw you off, especially if your own tracking isn't high enough to tell the difference between the old and fresh ones. He'll help you when an animal changes direction in an odd way, or when it dies stuffed behind a rock or piles up under some heavy brush that you can't see. He also allows me to wander around and gather all of the other tracks while he tracks the wounded game. Sometimes that allows me to find something close and get an extra kill here and there. When he finds something I would have missed, I love him. When he does something stupid, I hate him...and that brings me to the downfalls of the Scent Hound, as he has plenty. First, he is excruciatingly slow to level up. Mine is level 37 and I have been hunting him since they released. There really isn't a great time to feed him treats to help with leveling, so leave the treats at home with this one. Second, there are times where he just can't find the animal. I'm not talking about the times where he isn't supposed to (such as animal is still alive, or he gives a ? confusion sign). I'm talking about times where you shoot something with a bow, and he follows the trail a while, then just stops. You set him back on the trail and stops again...over and over again. Third, there are times when he spooks game. You can control this quite a bit by just being careful and mindful of your surroundings. If you put your dog in the "Stay" position while you're prone, you won't have any issues and can call animals to you just like you always could. If you're in a treestand and your dog is on the ground, he can sometimes cause an animal to flee, even when he is in the "Stay" position. Overall, I like having my hound most of the time. The Hound has seemingly infinite Stamina, so you never really have to worry about him tiring out.

Pointer - The Pointer allows you to find certain game. He can find birds and canines, and in later levels can find deer and bobcats. Mine is currently level 35, and I mainly use her to find small birds (ptarmigans and pheasants) and rabbits. For this, she is really outstanding. Unlike the other two breeds of dog, I can't think of any serious bugs with this one. When I'm bird or rabbit hunting, I'm not that concerned with spooking things, since I'm going to shooting often, and those species don't run off too far anyway...and in any case, I have my Pointer to find them again. For ptarmigans, the dog is great for finding entire flocks, which allows you to pick them off, then use the dog to find the next flock. For cottontails, you can clear entire areas of them. Sure, it doesn't know the difference between birds and rabbits, but you only really have to worry about that on Logger's Point. You could always focus on Pheasants on Hirsch or Cottontails on Settler Creeks. Another positive note for the Pointer is that she levels up really fast. My Pointer is nearly the same level as my Scent Hound, which is crazy considering how long I've owned the Hound. I do have one major concern with the Pointer. It's not a bug, but in my opinion, is a design flaw. When mine levels up to level 36, she will gain Detection Accuracy 2, which means she will stop and point at 30m away instead of 20m away. If I were using her for deer or canines or bobcats, that might be useful. But I use mine to find rabbits and ptarmigans in the grass. I don't want her to stop further away when she gets better...I want her to stop CLOSER. At level 49, she'll stop even further away, at 40m, when she gains Detection Accuracy 3. I don't want to get too carried away since I'm not at those levels yet, but I can't imagine that it'll be better trying to set up on the ptarmigans from 40m than it was from 20m. This is the only dog that I dread leveling up, as I perceive that she might actually get worse at my primary function for her. Her Stamina is considerably higher than the Retriever, but she does tire out eventually. I think by the time I max that out (currently at 4 of 6) I should be able to hunt her all day without problems.
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VonStratos
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Re: Dog

Post by VonStratos »

Well you already have the feedback on the 3 options, but what you need to ask yourself first is: why i want the dog? if you want one for company and to carry stuff around Pointer sound like the best option, if you are gonna spend a lot of time doing waterfowling then Retriever, if you want torture yourself training a dog, Scent Hound is your star. :D it all depend on what your plan to do with the dog and what animals you hunt.

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Phoenix62
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Re: Dog

Post by Phoenix62 »

Wow, what a long responses ! U are all friendly so much ! Thx again . Now i can really take a dog knowing pro and cons about every race.
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