Cottontail Rabbit

[HooCairs]

* The Rabbit is now on Loggers Point and Settler creeks. On Loggers points it is near the clearcut areas. On Settler creeks they are on the southern fields
* Rabbits now stay within a given radius of their "local area" (home)
* Rabbit nervous behavior now uses its correct idles for being nervous
* Rabbit Death Animations are more convincing (sometimes jumps when dying)

[HooCairs]

Permitted Ammunition: Birdshot, Bows & Air Rifle (Soon available).

[HooCairs]

* Roaming Behaviour:
This behaviour has been tweaked so that the rabbit will stay within its territory of X meters or come back to its territory if somehow been scared out of it.
* Habitat:
The rabbits spawning location(where they become placed in the beginning of the game) is, momentarily, the same as the pheasants but will be corrected to more suit their natural habitat areas.
* Burrows:
Since the American Cottontail Rabbits do not create their own burrows, burrows will not be part of this animals gameplay.
* Living in pairs:
Being worked on as well!

[HooCairs]

...There is a weapon that covers a +70 meter distance if you try hard enough - it's the Air Rifle. Here's a harvested rabbit at 95 meters distance: http://www.thehunterdev.com/#profile/brobin/score/44291. Thus, you should be fine with sniping rabbits at a pretty decent distance...

Then the text in the shop needs to be changed where it says that the effective max range of the airgun is 50 m. Most people will not try to use the gun for longer distances with this instruction in mind.

< 50m they are guarantied to die from body shots. You can kill them at long distance but only if you hit the head or neck. This is only intended for experienced players and thus not something that we want to recommend to every one.

Basically effective range as I see it is the range at where you get a guaranteed kill unless you hit something like the legs, ears or tail. They may run a bit if hit in the body but they'll eventually die.

[HooCairs]

there are no lures for rabbits in RL as far as I know so it is not part of the design.

[HooCairs]

There seem to be some confusion on how this species should be hunted. In contrast to other species it is not a big deal of you spook a rabbit. Once it has spooked it will hop away and search for a patch of thick vegetation (shrubs & bushes) where it can hide and it will stay there for a pretty long while before being able to be spooked again.

A resourceful player can exploit this by noticing the direction where the rabbit runs and then methodically search bushes and shrubs in the area to find the rabbits hiding place. The challenge is not to avoid spooking the prey but to figure out where it's hiding before it decides to relocate. Once you've found the hiding spot it will be a simple case of "shooting a sitting duck" unless you get too close (basically stepping on it) which will make it flush out of hiding just as the pheasants do.

[HooCairs]

* Rabbit flush distance decreased from 5-20 meters to 5-10 meters
* Rabbit's sounds have gotten their volume increased a bit to be able to hear from a bit longer distances
- All sounds are at max volume within 16 meters
- After that the sounds quadratically decrease to a low volume at a distance of 25 meters
- Sound totally dies off at about 30-40 meters

[HooCairs]

In the patch that was just released all sounds have had their volume increased which should result in that you at least may hear them when spooking them out of their hiding place.
The rabbit is actually a lot more territorial than you think. They stay within a 100 meter radius of their spawn point - they may still run out of their territory if forced to by the player but they will always return when left alone after a while.
Also, the rabbits only run 40 meters (as you pointed out) from the threat and then hide in the first shrub/bush they find.

[HooCairs]

What is the max weight of the Rabbit?

2 kg

[HooCairs]

it is going to be the second species you can hunt for free, alongside the Mule Deer.