There's no game by this name, it's an attempt to combine the two hunting games I'm playing, Way of the Hunter and Call of the Wild. Having a great time with these games, and wanted to write a thread talking about both, comparing them and giving anyone who might be interested a view in to how they play.

I have experience with hunting. My father was a hunter, and as a kid I would see him head out with the men, and return in that old CJ5, dressed in his cammies and Bean boots, with a Browning over his shoulder, game in the ruck, or a deer to hoist in to the tree in the back yard. So I grew up around it, and around firearms. We had a trap range, archery range and a rifle range in the back yard. I've been shooting since I was old enough to be trusted with a weapon. The age of ten could not come fast enough, as in Joyzee that's the age you can take the hunter safety course, and as long as you don't frighten the instructor, get your first hunting license. I can still recall this day, 45 years later. I took my 20-gauge, single shot break-action shotgun. A Winchester I believe. It was a gift from dad, a simple weapon, and hard to get in to trouble with. I recall the fence test. Each hunter needs to demonstrate his ability to safely cross a fence. In another one, the instructors wanted to impress upon our young minds the power and lethality we held in our hands, and I recall they set up a one-gallon milk jug filled with water and shot it with a slug in front of the gathered youngsters. Boom! The water went everywhere and the sheer size of that 'explosion' certainly drove home how powerful these weapons are.

I passed. I was so proud of my accomplishment. Even though it was only a few years, at that age it feels a lifetime I had been preparing. Countless hours shooting clay pigeons, or zeroing scopes. My dad even taught me to handload ammunition. We had a shop, with ammo presses. They were rotating contraptions that had a handle like a slot machine. Insert the primer, measure out the powder, put in the wad, the shot and crimp. Rifle cartridges too. I must have reloaded hundreds or thousands of rounds before I was a teenager. I thought it was so cool, firing and even taking game with rounds I loaded by hand. Police up that brass!

Above it all though, sport shooting and hunting was something I shared with my dad. My brother wanted nothing to do with it, he said he didn't like blood. So it was just me and dad. We would hunt locally for small game and waterfowl. The southern Jersey coast is good for this. And we would travel for hunts for bigger game. Mostly whitetails in northeastern Pennsylvania, but occasionally other spots for different game. My dad gave me my first rifle, a Marlin lever-action .30-.30 with a 3x9 Swift scope. Then a Browning .243 BLR, and finally a Browning bolt-action .270. What a magnificent rifle! Shotguns too, pumps, over/unders and side-by-sides. .22s for plinking. Our gun cabinet was full.

When I was 16 my father passed. I didn't handle it well. My best friend, and he was gone. I continued to hunt for a few years. Dad's hunting club brothers were very kind to me, inviting me to go with them. But it could never be the same.. The best thing about hunting was no more. By the time I was twenty I was done. The magic for me was gone, and after college I no longer wanted to actually shoot animals. The killing was never the thing for me. It was about the camaraderie, the woodsmanship. Being in the forest, nature. I did take game, but it was everything else about the sport that appealed to me. Tracking, wind and scent, stalking, reading sign, camouflage, mastering weapons. I mean, I loved just cleaning my guns. That smell! But I would never hunt again.

I still shoot, because I enjoy it. But the hunting is done. Or is it?

I was aware of course of the game The Hunter: Call of the Wild (2017), the sequel to The Hunter Classic. But I never pulled the trigger. My remote impressions were it was a bit arcade, and that I wouldn't like it a much as I should. So I skipped it. This past summer another hunting game released, called Way of the Hunter. The word was it was more of a hunting simulation than Call of the Wild. So I sat up and took notice. I wondered if perhaps this game could fill that void I've felt for thirty years. If it could perhaps take me back to that time in my life I enjoyed so much. A way to experience the things I liked about the sport, but without actually harvesting animals.

And you know what? It sure does. I've really taken to it. And so much so that I picked up Call of the Wild too. These are games, sure, but they have that certain something that hits the right notes for me. Being in the woods, stalking, taking good, ethical shots, always using the proper weapon to match the game. The reserves in both titles are breathtakingly beautiful. They succeed in allowing me to suspend my reality and become a hunter once again. In a sense it's a perfect thing for me, all the best things about hunting, while removing the worst. No killing, no dragging from remote areas, no field dressing, ya know? Just you, a rifle and nature. At its essence, this is just stealth gaming, and that's right up my alley.

So I want to use this thread to talk about how the games play, comparing the two titles, discussing my experiences as I take this ride. More to come.

The first thing to address is how the games compare on a macro level. There's a third option, The Hunter : Classic, which is well-regarded, and has ditched the pay to win vibe it had for years, and which kept me from trying it. Now, you can just play it, but that ship has sailed for me, the game is much older (2009?), and with Way of the Hunter and Call of the Wild I don't feel compelled to give that one a go. But don't ignore it either. It has a fine reputation.

So then, how do the two more recent titles compare? I'd put it like this. Way of the Hunter is more of a hunting sim, Call of the Wild is more complete. I like the word 'robust', which encompasses how varied and complete it is. More maps, more animals, weapons and kit. It's expected, given it's six-year headstart. If Way of the Hunter follows a similar expansion trajectory I see this one eventually emerging the winner. Right now, the relative strengths and weaknesses round out in about the same spot for me. I prefer the actual hunting, or the field work in Way of the Hunter. But lately I've been putting all of my time in to Call of the Wild. Having many more reserves and animals to hunt gives it an edge. Once I've seen it all (and that will take a long time) I expect that I'll find my level more with Way of the Hunter. But it has some way to go to catch up.

What I think gives Way of the Hunter the edge in the field is more convincing animal behavior and animations, better shooting, ballistics and penetration and a herd management mechanic. The animal behavior is key. They are more alert and wary, their flush and spook reactions feel more realistic to me based on the hunting I've done. I feel like I need to be more measured and careful when stalking in Way of the Hunter. Call of the Wild is more forgiving? is maybe the right word. A few degrees easier perhaps to harvest the game. Both titles have rather abundant wildlife populations. Finding game is way easier than real-life of course. In that sense both games lose a bit of a connection to reality. But then I think, these are pristine reserves. No people, no traffic, no urban sprawl, no other hunters. Maybe places like this would be teeming with so much game. I don't know. But the feeling is it's all a bit too perfect. Sure, you have some down time with nothing around occasionally, but that never lasts for long. And if you are measured and careful, you'll always be close to another opportunity. Be a bit clumsy, ignore the wind, or make too much noise and you'll spook 'em out of there. Call of the Wild is a little more forgiving here, like I said, and it's all bit easier to approach to close range. It requires less of a methodical, slow stalk to get a good shot.

That's the actual hunting, and my opinion of it. But what about everything else? It's probably a bit unfair, given the relative infancy of Way of the Hunter, but I can only compare what they are, with maybe some speculation about what they will become. With that said, Call of the Wild exceeds Way of the Hunter in just about every possible way at the moment. Twelve reserves to two. Far more weapons. 82 animals to 20. Both have ATVs to ride, with Way of the Hunter just adding this last week. Both have lodges where you can show off your trophies. Call of the Wild has things like stands and blinds that Way of the Hunter has none of. Callers, scents, masking, decoys. Much more robust, right?

And what really sets Call of the Wild apart for me is it also has bows, crossbows and handguns, which Way of the Hunter does not have. I really enjoy the bow hunting, the added challenge it presents in getting a good shot. Highly rewarding to take a big buck with a bow.

But all of this robustness has a price in Call of the Wild. Much of what it has is locked behind DLC. Each player will have his own thoughts on this. Me? Somewhere in the middle I guess. I understand these companies are in it to make money. It's a cycle. They make a game, we give them money, they make more stuff, and so on it goes. Ten of the reserves, along with many weapons, ammunition and more are DLC-locked. There's still a good game there even without it, but I'd suggest that if you like it, you'll be dropping the cash to fill out your install, no doubt. Whether that is good, bad or indifferent is down to each player.

In addition, Call of the Wild also has 'mastery' levels, or whatever they call them. Using a certain weapon increases your mastery level, which is good, because many items are locked this way. You can't shoot this gun, or that ammo until you've proven yourself sort of thing. That too is fine, as far as I am concerned. Where it wasn't, was when I bought the Yukon DLC to unlock a .300 win mag rifle for class 9 (biggest game). You have to buy the DLC to get the gun, and then I realized I also needed twice the rifle mastery I have in order to buy it. Oi vey. Either rank-lock or DLC-lock your stuff, fine. But both? No.

By comparison, Way of the Hunter (out since August) has just one DLC plus a season pass. The pay DLC has just one shotgun, a statue and something else inconsequential. Everything else they've added since release has been for free, like the ATV, some new weapons and animals. What the plan is going forward isn't so clear to me. But I bought the season pass because new reserves, weapons and animals are planned, like adding archery. But those are just promises at the mo. In Call of the Wild you get what you pay for. In Way of the Hunter I can't be sure exactly what I've paid for

So which one should you get? Hell if I know. I just work here. But I think the answer is both. Or keep reading and decide for yourself.

Getting this close (Way of the Hunter) to wary game is a proper challenge. Selected difficulty plays a role in how alert the quarry is. In this case I let these mulies pass. Way of the Hunter's herd management encourages the player to cull the weakest and oldest, in order to improve the overall fitness of the herd. Culling one-star matures for example will probably result in higher rated animals down the line. The group pictured here was young males and adult females, no matures. So I let them go.

One of the core concepts behind each of these hunting games is ethics. To harvest the game as cleanly as possible, and this involves two things -- hitting the right spot on the animal, and using proper weapons and ammunition. Shooting a bunny rabbit with a ,338 Lapua is overkill. Matching the round to the game is fundamental. Each game uses a class or tier system, with both animals and weapons rated. A class 4 whitetail deer requires a class 4 rifle, like a .243.or a .270. A single shot targeting the vital organs with a properly matched cartridge (or arrow/bolt) results in the cleanest kills, and the highest scores.

That is fine. That is good. I fully buy in to the ethical mojo. I only shoot with the right weapon, never saying "well just this once", and many times I've been forced to let an animal pass by because I my loadout wasn't right. This happens far more often in Way of the Hunter, which is more restrictive in what you can carry. While I am fully onboard with the ethical hunting thing, I have to point out that I don't care for how heavy handed Way of the Hunter approaches the subject. Preachy, and written like it's for six year olds. Maybe it's written in another language and the translation is poor. But it's eye-rolling. Imagine if your state government was producing ethical hunting instructional material for fourth-graders in the 1970s. I tolerate it, and these moments pass quickly. Others may find it quaint or charming, I don't know, so I won't dwell on it.

Carry restrictions gives each game a slightly different vibe here. In Way of the Hunter, you are limited to two weapons at a time. Call of the Wild instead uses a max carry weight. In Way of the Hunter, two weapons is not enough to cover all animal tiers. There's no (current) combination of two weapons that covers it all from rabbits to moose. Call of the Wild is more generous. Standard max carry is 20 pounds. You decide how to fill it, perhaps opting for guns over callers and scents, or a tent or decoys. Ruck sacks are available to increase this max weight, but these also increase visibility and noise signature. This is more flexible and allows you to carry weapons to cover all classes of animals in your loadout, but perhaps at the expense of other kit and gear. Or opt for a ruck, your call. There's more opportunity cost in Way of the Hunter, and loadout choices feel more consequential as a result. In Way of the Hunter my standard carry is a .308 bolt action Steyr Monobloc and a .300 Steyr SM12 bolt action. Both are scoped. This combination covers most of the game, all the largest for sure, but not the smallest like birds and waterfowl, rabbits, fox, badgers and the sort. So I stalk with that loadout in general, but make special hunts when I want to go for the smaller stuff, taking a .22 and a shotgun for example when duck hunting. But if an elk trundles past, there's nothing I can do. This can happen too in Call of the Wild depending on your choices, but you can cover for it also.

There are far too many weapons and ammunition types (Call of the Wild only at the mo) to go in to any real detail in this thread (unless asked). And I'll say that ballistics are simplified, developed for gaming purposes rather than realism. But I have to give the edge to Way of the Hunter, which feels more real to me especially the way that range is modeled, and how the projectile behaves over distance. Bullet drop, impact energy. Way of the Hunter has a neat mechanic that shows this energy in joules, and as long as you aren't on Ranger difficulty, you can see this prior to taking the shot, showing you the estimated energy at impact and whether that is proper for the animal you are targeting. Each animal is rated with a range of proper energy, and your task is to match that and take the game cleanly. And with this energy displayed you can see in real time how range effects the ballistics. Your .308 might be delivering 3200 joules at 150 yards, but that might drop to say 2,200 at 300 yards. So the range to the target plays a big role in which cartridge is ethical.

A good example is the .350 Guide rifle. Guides don't hunt, and they carry a rifle like this for defense of the hunting party they are leading. If a bear attacks, you need that massive stopping power of a .350 round. But a round like this loses energy quickly over distance. So while it is a class 6 (highest tier) rifle, the loss of energy reduces its tier rating at range. This leads to using it at short range against moose, elk and bear. But if you stand off a bit it becomes suitable for deer, as the lower energy now fits in to the ethical window for the smaller tier 5 animals. Pretty cool, and this ballistic modeling I prefer over Call of the Wild, which feels more formulaic and less dynamic. Both are satisfying, but Way of the Hunter feels more correct based on my shooting and hunting experience.

So this more convincing shooting, combined with more convincing animal behavior and what feels to me like more detailed penetration modeling all add up to giving Way of the Hunter the edge in the field for me. The actual hunting and shooting just feels better. But honestly, Call of the Wild isn't far behind, and both result in fun and convincing hunting out in the field.

In Way of the Hunter, animals are classified according to a star system. One star is the lowest rated and five stars is the best in terms of trophy and fitness. This is my first five-star whitetail, taken with a .308 Monobloc.at 225 yards. I like hunting all of the animals in these games, but I consider myself a whitetail hunter first.






Another core concept in both games is hunting pressure. Each shot taken and each animal harvested results in more pressure on that local region. With enough pressure, the animals will migrate out of the area. In Call of the Wild, this is represented by purple blotches on the map. You want to keep moving around, never hunting one location for too long. In this shot of the Silver Ridge Peaks map in Call of the Wild, you can see the purple spots that mark where I took a shot. These fade out over time with the brightest ones showing the most recent shots.

So how do these games run?

My box is Bond-Built™ Ryzen 2600, 1660Ti and 16 gigs o' RAM. Both games are installed on a mechanical drive.

And they both run like sh!t through a goose. No performance issues at top settings even on this modest hardware. Smooth framerates and perfect stability. No crashes or slowdowns for me.

Graphically, Way of the Hunter gets the nod. It's much newer so I reckon we would expect this. Textures are better, animal models and animations are superior to my eye. And in one of the most drastic differences between the two games, Way of the Hunter has much longer render distances. Call of the Wild cuts animals out at 500 meters. Way of the Hunter does not. If there is a render limit to Way of the Hunter I haven't noticed. I can spot animals at 1000 yards. Of course you won't shoot at such range, but it gives you targets to stalk in on and makes the gameworld feel more real and alive. Vegetation too, although both games have a limit, meaning animals far away are sometimes more visible than closer ones. This is especially true of small game. At 200 yards you might be able to see a fox clearly, since the vegetation isn't rendered around him. But as you move in closer, that starts to be drawn and now you can't find the fox in the high grass. This is one of the things that serves to break that suspended reality and remind me I'm playing a game.

What I find I am disappointed with in both titles is the positional sound. I can't be sure if it's related to my hardware/headphones or how it is implemented in game, but the positional cues have little accuracy, which makes it very difficult to pinpoint locations by sound. Too bad, as that would be great, and makes the game a little harder than it should be unless you use the visual cues the games offer, which I do. I'd like to drop this crutch, but it would take a complete sound rework (or better hardware?) and that's not going to happen.

Otherwise, both games have good soundscape, although I wonder sometimes how accurate some of the animals calls are. One of them sounds more like big merchant screws through hydrophones in Silent Hunter than any animal I've ever heard. The weapons sound good in the main, and there's ambient nature sounds, although these can be overbearing on some maps. Hard to find the right balance I think.

Time passes at a rate that feels really nice. In Way of the hunter it is 3x, or 20 minutes per hour. In Call of the Wild it is 4x, or 15 minutes per hour.

A typical scene in Call of the Wild. A female elk trundles down to the lake to have a drink, on a foggy morning. Weather is modeled in both games, with thunderstorms, rain, wind and snow (Call of the Wild only I think). Yesterday I was hunting the Yukon reserve in CotW. My dog (real life) was looking at me expectantly. But I was far from any camp. I didn't want to exit, as that would spawn me back at the last camp. So I crouched up under an evergreen alongside a trail to pass the time while I walked the dog. When I returned later, the green scene I left had been covered over in a fresh snowfall and was all white. pretty cool.

This was a great write up! Dbond had really talked this game up enough to give me the itch to buy it. As a hunter when I was younger it has really brought me back to my youth sitting up in a tree and walking through the woods looking for rubbings and game trails.
Ive only put about 4 hours into the game so far but I am very much enjoying it. Im playing the game on a 48' Ultrawide and there are times I just stop on a cliff edge just to look at how beautiful the game is.
Still searching for my first 5 star buck!

Keep at it. Five stars have been rare for me in Way of the Hunter, but that's the way it should be right?

So far I've taken five star

Whitetail Deer
Red Deer
Mule Deer
Bighorn
Mountain Goat
Pheasant x 2

That's out of 160+ harvested animals, so a five star rate of about 4%. I've spotted two five stars I was unable to get a good shot on, and I don't take bad shots. If I don't feel assured of a proper, ethical, successful shot I don't take it. I've still missed, but nine shots out of ten find the mark. I think of it like shooting torpedoes in sub sims. High accuracy is more a function of positioning than shooting skill I think. Same approach here. Some players crank rounds downrange at anything that moves. But I try to ensure that every shot taken results in a harvest. I've had a few get away, and I actually feel bad about it! Like I've left a wounded animal, even if it's all virtual, but that's how much I get in to it.

Call of the Wild has a 'consecutive harvest' mechanic to encourage and reward the player for making sure every shot results in a harvest. If you hit any animal that you don't end up harvesting it breaks the bonus. Each successful shot raises the bonus by 20%. So if you take five in a row you get a 100% bonus to cash and XP (or maybe more accurately, you get 100% of what you should). It also used to affect trophy score, but the players didn't like it so the devs changed it.

I said above that Call of the Wild has 12 reserves, but it's 13. Two included in the base game and eleven as DLC. I have seven of them now with the purchase of the Yukon reserve. Itching for a sale when I'll snap up the rest, if I don't cave before then.

Both games have taxidermy to show off your trophies.

In Way of the Hunter, there are two main lodges, one in each reserve (Idaho and Transylvania) and you can only mount animals taken in each reserve in their respective lodge.

In Call of the Wild, there are two lodges as well, but they are DLC, 3 bucks each, and you can mount any animal taken in any reserve in either lodge. When you harvest any animal you have the option to save it for taxidermy. So if you don't have the cash you can save it for later. Or until you decide to buy the DLC. I hit the limit which is ten so I had to buy the lodge.

In both you can choose from a variety of displays, although the Call of the Wild lodges have more spots and one has case and displays for weapons.

I mounted my first buck in each game, even though they aren't top trophies. But you gotta keep your first buck right? Growing up, the tradition in our camp was to cut the shirt tail off when a hunter took his first buck. I didn't know why they did that, but that's what happens. Honor traditions, don't question them

Other than those first bucks and any taxidermy that's done through the story line, I'm only mounting the best ones, five stars in WotH and top golds and diamonds in CotW. Taxidermy is expensive in both games, so you need to be selective.


My lodges are rather sparse at the moment, as it's expensive and I have only taken so many worthy animals.

Way of the Hunter (Bear Den Lodge) The whitetail in the center of the shot is the one shown above taken with the .308.







Call of the Wild (Safari Lodge). It looks like you can tour your friends' lodges, so when Sintax gets one I'll see. He couldn't resist the tales I was telling haha and picked up this one too.






Those are some fine bucks

This shot shows how Way of the Hunter displays the impact energy. In the upper right, this shot analysis shows impact in joules with the range displayed as well. When the energy number is gold it is within the ethical window. When white, it is above or below. So at a glance you can check before taking the shot. On Ranger difficulty, there is no Hunter Sense ability, which reveals this and more. I'm playing on Hunter difficulty and have this info available. You can clean up the UI if you want less of this info displayed too.

The deer in this image are mule deer, and their ethical energy window is 1,576-3,783 joules. This .308 is around 3,100 at 203 yards and puts it in the upper end of the window, which is what you want to kill as quickly and cleanly as possible. Impact energy is only that, and doesn't account for placement. Vitals still need to be hit to ensure a clean one.

Several times I've mentioned 'mastery' in Call of the Wild but that's just my term for it. It's actually called weapon score.

Weapon Score Wiki

This is gained for each weapon type whenever you successfully harvest an animal with that weapon. So rifles, handguns, shotguns and bows all have their own scores.

The score is calculated by using a proper cartridge and getting the bonuses for quick kill, integrity, consecutive harvest and possibly more? I try to pay close attention to my scores after each one, but I've missed some. The wiki says the score can range from 0 to 75. The highest score I've noticed is 62, so I wonder how exactly this is determined. It seems to me empirically that just using a properly rated round (or arrow/bolt) isn't all there is to it. For example, my most used rifle is the .308. Deer taken with this rifle seem to average around 50 score. Elk and moose however are closer to 60/62 on average with the same weapon which covers class 4-8. Whitetails are class 4 and elk/moose are class 8. So it 'appears' to me that using cartridges in the upper end of their class range yields higher scores. If so, I'd expect with everything else being equal, that taking a whitetail with a .243 (class 2-6) should yield higher scores on average than a .308.

However! The smaller round makes getting the quick kill bonus that much harder to do. But assuming all bonuses, I think this may help explain the discrepancies I see from shot to shot with the score that is awarded.

I mentioned above how I bought the Yukon reserve DLC in order unlock the Canning .300 mag rifle to be my big game gun. Only to find that not only was it locked behind pay DLC, it was also locked behind rifle score. And that number is 6092. If you averaged 50 score per rifle kill, that's 121.84 kills to hit the number to unlock the gun. I crossed 5,100 points last night so nearly there, another 20 rifle harvests or so should do it. But this has been quite the hill to climb. On a different (active) forum a helpful member suggested using trainers to just grant myself the score since it is silly that you'd need to do it just to buy a rifle (which has in effect been paid with real money)

But that's not how I roll. Instead, I saw this a challenge. And when I do get it it will feel earned. Along the way (4,336 score) I unlocked the .338. This is a very powerful rifle that is ideal for the biggest game like lions, cape buffalo, bison. Both the .300 and .338 cover class 7-9, which encompasses smaller game like black, brown and grizzly bear, elk, moose and gemsbok plus the class 9s. But the .338 is single-shot break action, and I'm not a fan of this style rifle, so I've been holding out for the .300, which is a magazine fed bolt-action. This sh!t's expensive, so if I had caved on the .338 I would have had to wait a long time to build up the cash reserves to also buy the .300. Serious willpower. Serious firepower

The payoff will be Africa. I've purposely avoided it so far, preferring to wait for the .300. It will be my reward, plus I'm also a little frightened of the aggressive killers there so I want to ensure I'll have the ability to take them down at long range. I'm the hunter here, dammit.

Turns out I needed 22 more kills to trip the threshold to purchase the .300 Canning. And interestingly I got a 75 rifle score. This was a 90-yard .223 shot on a Eurasian Lynx. Hit through the neck, which evidently counts as vitals. Nothing remarkable about this one and I don't understand why it was max score. It hardly matters now that I've unlocked virtually everything tied to rifle score. I still need another 400 points to get the .300 polymer tip ammunition, but I think that's it. The .338 was followed by the .470 and then the .300. That covers all the best big-game rifles.

There are a few reasons I wanted this rifle. The first is that I take my shooting percentage too seriously. I hate missing, always looking to take a good shot. When I went to the Finland map, called Revontuli, I set out on the first mission called the Blue Trail. Near the end of this the player is to demonstrate his shooting prowess, taking shots from inside rock circles on the ground at targets at increasing distances. 50, 100, 150, 200 and 300 meters. The targets are tiny, about the size of a dinner plate. I hit the first four on the first shot. But I missed the 300m target four times. Factory zero is 150m and I didn't know the required hold-over to hit at 300. I wasn't expecting to need to do this, or I could have gone to the range first and worked it out.

And then I looked at my shooting percentage, and all those shots counted as misses. I did miss four, but these shots shouldn't count, like at the range. But if you're going to make them count at least count the hits! So I gave it up as a bad job and not happy with what had just happened to my percentage. I decided to wait until I had the top scope, a 8x16, and the .300, which presumably has a flatter trajectory than any of my current rifles. I reckoned that combo would let me hit the 300m dinner plate.

Another reason I wanted it is I was not keen on my current class 9 options. I have a hand cannon .454 revolver, but of course that's only good in tight. And I have the Drilling rifle, which is a 16ga side-by-side over a single 9.3x74r rifle barrel. This can do the business on class 9s, but not really my sort of weapon. Bolt-actions are, so I wanted the .300.

Not only does it give you that big-game cartridge, it has a longer effective range. And if I'm going on safari in Africa, I want this. It's called the Canning Magnum Frontier in game, but looks like a Weatherby Model V, which I have shot at the range. I like using guns in the game I use in real life.

So after buying it I went to the rifle range in Hirschfelden. It's a free DLC. I needed to see how much holdover is required at 300m with this rifle. There is a zeroing perk, which I have yet to get. It's two levels. First level gets short zero, 50m I think, which is all but useless. Second level though gets long zero at 300m. With this perk all I'd need to do is put the crosshairs on and pull. But that shooting percentage thing makes me leery. The zero perk is an active one. You turn it on, I think with F key. But I can see how easy it would be to forget this, have it on 300m when you suddenly come across a buck at 75m and boom! the round sails over. All it takes is some practice at the range with the various rifles to learn their hold-overs/unders for different ranges. So I'm not sure whether I will pick up that perk.

Here's my first group with my new Weatherby Canning at 300m. First two shots aren't even on this target. I held over too much. Then they started hitting a little short and the final one on the bull to show me where to hold. Scope wobble is insanely bad. I really hate it. I was prone, but the wobble was like I'd just drunk a whole bottle of Jack. the combination of the inherent wobble, the high magnification of the high-power scope and the tiny target at long range makes it far harder than it would be in real life. It's a game yeah, but this is pretty bad. It's far better in Way of the Hunter. If you want to use wobble to differentiate stances, fine, I get it. But prone is supported and the only wobble is your breath and heartbeat. Not this drunken mess. It all adds up to mean that very long range shooting is harder than it should be in Call of the Wild.

Not many sim hunters around here I see. Comments are welcome in case that may not be obvious

Among the best things about both of these hunting games are the reserves. Big, beautiful and diverse. Way of the Hunter's reserves are much larger per map, but Call of the Wild makes up for it by having far more. I believe more maps are in the pipeline for both games, and we'll see how that shakes out.

Way of the Hunter currently has two reserves, both I believe are 55 square miles (142 sq kilometers).

-- Nez Perce valley is the North American reserve. Pacific northwest is the description, and I think I read it is supposed to be Idaho? Regardless of where it is, it is stunning.

-- Transylvania is the European reserve. More open, and rolling, but plenty of rough country too.

The view to the west from the deck of the main lodge, Bear Den, in Way of the Hunter. The river valley running across the center is a great spot for deer and pheasant.






Call of the Wild has 13 reserves and on average I believe they are about 24 square miles (64 sq kilometers)

-- Layton Lake is one of the two reserves included in the base game. This one is also Pacific Northwest

-- Hirschfelden is the other reserve included in the base game. A Europe map and where the DLC rifle range is located.

DLC reserves (cost is US $8 per)

-- Medved-Taiga. A Siberian snow map. Probably my least favorite, of the ones I have, if I had to pick one. Beautiful, but dangerous. Bring a close defense weapon.

-- Vurhonga Savanna. Played this one last night for the first time. Wide open as you'd expect. A really nice diversion from the other maps, but of all the reserves, this one suffers most from the restricted rendering distance in Call of the Wild.View distance is phenomenal on all of these maps, but animals are cut out at 500m. It's most jarring here with the vast vistas over the savanna.

-- Parque Fernando. An Argentinian reserve

-- Yukon Valley. Stunning map with seasonal change and big game. Grizzlies.

-- Cuatro Colinas. Spanish reserve

-- Silver Ridge Peaks. Southern Rockies. This was the first map I hunted.

-- Te Awaroa. New Zealand reserve.

-- Rancho del Arroyo. Mexico reserve. Typical arid terrain as found in the American southwest and northwestern Mexico

-- Mississippi Acres. South central United States. Universally voted least-favorite map in the game. Has gators though.

-- Revontuli Coast. Finland. This might be my favorite map to hunt. Whitetail hunting is my thing, and this is a great reserve for whitetails. I also love the terrain. The forests are not as dense as most others, the terrain is more gentle and rolling, and there is very little of the heavy undergrowth that makes sight lines on other reserves more challenging. Feels like hunting in my county park. Lots of class 1 game, making it the best small game and .22 reserve. Mostly birds.

-- New England Mountains. The newest reserve in Call of the Wild. I don't have it but really want it. I think this map will be the closest to the terrain I've hunted. Waiting for a sale.


Sunrise in Finland. Revontuli is a beautiful reserve (as are they all!)





Stalking with a bow for whitetails alongside a lake in the Layton Lake reserve.

I have Hunter Call of the Wild, and while I technically have tons of time in it. Not much of it has been actual hunting. It's just gorgeous and a good way to escape the frozen winters here for short spurts and walk around some very realistic looking locations. I put it in the "wind down after a long day" category of games.

Hey wormfood. I know there are some players who play Call of the Wild as a wildlife photography game. And there are missions for this in some reserves. They don't want to hunt the animals, just photograph them and enjoy the walk in such stunning environs. Pretty cool (I like the hunting though).

If anyone is new to the game, or just wants to see which animals, weapons and cartridges (including arrows/bolts) are in Call of the Wild, check out this link. I refer to this constantly, mostly to decide on which loadout I want to carry for each map. The animals listed along with their classes on the left hand side of the spreadsheet show which classes your weapons need to cover if you want to cover them all, which isn't necessary of course.

Call of the Wild Class and Cartridge

It also shows which DLC unlocks which ammunition and weapons. Any weapons or ammo in a Weapon Pack is free to use after purchase of the DLC. Others may be locked behind weapons score as well.

Another very handy reference I use a lot is this chart for Way of the Hunter. It is a little out of date, and doesn't include a few of the most recent guns. But it is a good tool to help decide on which cartridge to use for which game. The way energy over range is handled means that matching weapon tier to animal tier is more of a grey area, but as a 'rule of thumb' sort of reference it works very well. Ballistic performance seems to me to be tied to the ammunition, and not the gun. So for example both.300 win mag rifles have identical performance. I have read however that the Steyr rifles are more accurate than the Remingtons. If so, the difference is minor at best, and both manufacturers will serve you well.

Another core concept that both games share is need zones. Each animal species has zones for rest, eating and drinking. They move between each on rough schedules. So for example, hunting near a water source at dawn or dusk is more likely to find whitetails than during the middle of the afternoon, when they'll be at their resting zones. As you move around the map you'll identify these zones, which become marked on your map. Over time you gain the knowledge of the best places to go, and at what time of day, to find the species you are looking for. In both games, lakes are key spots. Not only do they attract animals, they tend to extend sight lines. Taking shots clear across a lake is common.

So which ways can we hunt? Both games have towers spread around the reserves. These of course give an elevated perspective, increasing your search radius and getting your point of view above the undergrowth and folds in the terrain. In Call of the Wild only, there are additional blinds that can be constructed, both permanent and temporary. These methods are called ambush hunting and it can work fine. There is a lot of game around, and the likelihood of getting a shot is relatively high, compared to real life anyway. Both games have callers you can use, and they are very effective. Bring the game to you.

But I don't really do any of that. I'm a stalker. I move slowly and quietly through the terrain, stopping frequently to listen and glass the surrounding terrain, and to break up my noise signature. Even going very slow and low, you're going to generate some noise. Wind is a key factor. Whenever I'm planning a stalk, I have a look at the wind, then the map, to decide on where to begin, and then stalk upwind. The wind direction changes often, but hunting downwind is difficult, your scent easily detected and making the animals alert if not spooked outright. So I choose a spot to begin and stalk upwind toward a destination like a lake, or maybe another camp. It works great, and is a lot more enjoyable than sitting in a stand or blind for me. Even though callers are effective, I rarely use them. Something about hunting this way is not for me.

I have a lot of friends who hunt. I give them grief about how they do it, telling them 'that's not hunting!" Many of them drive the deer, or other game. A line of shooters take up position, then another line moves through the terrain in their direction, flushing the game toward the shooters. No, that's not hunting. Some of my friends spend all year baiting deer, putting out piles of apples or other food to condition the game to come to that spot looking for a free meal. Then, when deer season rolls around, instead of a pile of apples it's, the lazy hunter with his rifle waiting for them. Easy meal, indeed.

Over the years as I've hunted and fished, I see there are many approaches to these sports. Some take the easier routes, others, like me, want to challenge ourselves and do things in the manner requiring more skill. For example, when you fish, do you use live bait? It's super effective and you'll catch a lot of fish. By contrast, fly fishing is more difficult. The casting, the presentation, fooling a fish by matching the hatch. This is fishing, to me. I want to find the art in the sport. The 'catch' isn't the aim really, it's the experience and challenge, testing my skill against the game. Stalking is for me, the purest form of hunting, and better yet, with a bow!

Regardless of how you might feel about any of this, the options exist in both games to allow all of these approaches. Find your zone. Even driving is possible in multiplayer, if you're so inclined.


I've talked a lot about my pursuit of the .300 win mag rifle. On my first hunt with this rifle, in the Yukon reserve, I was glassing a grizzly at about 400 yards, and thinking how I might intercept him as he moved across the meadow. Suddenly another grizzly emerged from the undergrowth to my right. You can assign a key to mount and remount scopes in an instant (I set it to N which is not used in Call of the Wild). I bought the gun for it's long range, big game capability, but my first shot was at 6 yards! Too close. My first grizzly bear. The muzzle brake on this rifle makes me think it's modeled after the Weatherby Mark V Accumark. There are two versions to buy, and I bought the traditional one with the wood stock.





And a few random shots of yesterday's hunting. This is the view from what might be the highest point in the Silver Ridge Peaks map. What a climb! But man, what a view. Those clouds were roiling through the valley. You have to see it in motion. Beautiful





A moose taken with the .300




In both games, the keys to a successful harvest are proper ammunition and placement. Here's a perfect shot, taken with a .22 on a drake paddling on the pond. Dead center. Literally, a sitting duck.

For fishing, I think part of that is what you're fishing for. Walleye aren't gonna bite any fly fishing lure on the surface. You need to get the bait down on the bottom where they hang out at.
Then again, that depends on why you're fishing. Fly fishing is a bit more fun, but man do walleye taste good.

Good point, and probably why I don't fish for them. Same with catfish, or any fish that needs bait to catch. Like flounder fishing. I can't stand it. Bottom-bumping, drift fishing with bait on spreader rigs just ain't my cuppa. I need artificials and casting to keep me interested. The only real exception is shark. Chumming and drifting with cut bait. But those are sharks!

Everything else I fish for is with lures. Some trolling, like for tuna or marlin, but mostly cast fishing. that's what I like.

Actually, my reply misses the point, it's not that walleye require bait, but that they don't hit on flies. You can still catch 'em on lures, but down deep generally. Anyway, While I used flies as the extreme example to make my point, it's artificials that are the real point. I've never been all that keen on deep fishing. Lake trout, drum, wreck fishing off the coast. I'm more of a trout or bass fisherman in fresh water. And then again, I catch and release, as I tell my son, to ensure the fishery for his grandchildren.

Back to the hunting... OK, not that fast.... there's also a Call of the WIld: Angler put out by the same company as the hunting game.

OK, back to the hunting for realz this time. Yesterday I hunted several maps, and had great luck with whitetails on Layton Lake reserve. There are achievements for harvesting 50 examples of each of the many animals, all the ones that were in the original release anyway. "Whitetail Hunter" is the one I want and I must be closing in by now. After spending about a half hour zipping around the reserve on the ATV to unlock a few more outposts, I got down to the hunting, fast travelling to a spot to the west of a likely looking lake, and then stalking toward it, in to the wind. Whitetails were out in full force, and as I slowly made my way to the water I spotted a group of them across the lake. Using the binoculars, I picked out the one with the best looking rack and took the shot with the .308 from 256 yards. Good shot, and he went down after a couple of steps.

He was on the far side of the lake and I had to go the long way around to get to him, but did so very slowly and quietly, as I could see more deer in the area. I started crawling within 100 yards so that I wouldn't spook the deer now drinking further along the shore.

My view as I crawled up, bow in hand in anticipation of the next shot. Nice buck, 14-pointer!





After harvesting that buck, I kept crawling and got in a good position, when the deer finished drinking and turned to head back to their forest lair. I popped up and took a shot. I don't hunt does/females really, but I will with a bow, since it's more difficult to get a good shot, so I take the bird in hand approach, take what I can get. You can see her friends to the left, including a young buck. The sight is a rangefinder, called a Brightsight. You place the red dot over the target and hit E, which locks in the range, and then place the green dot which now appears on the spot you want to target. Simple and accurate. I feel very confident anywhere inside 90 yards. The white marks on the ground are the highlights for tracks. Bow is the 65-pound peak draw, compound Orpheus, firing 420-grain broadheads. I'm closing in on the required bow weapons score to buy the Hawk Edge 70, and along he way I'll unlock the 300gr small game and 600gr big game broadheads. Strangely I can buy tracer arrows in these weights, but not the standard broadheads. Tracer arrows are not like traditional tracer rounds, tracing the path. They emit a flashing red beacon to help locate game in dense brush and high grass.

I don't think I could play such a hunting focused game though it would be great if that level detail and mechanics could be brought to an open world survival game.

Yeah, you're right Crane. Having to harvest game in order to feed yourself to survive using mechanics like these. Use the wrong cartridge, or hit the wrong spot and you might spoil a good deal of the potential sustenance you get. And if ammunition is precious, it would put a premium making the most of your opportunities. Taking large, healthy animals in the cleanest way possible. Bow hunting would rise in appeal because you can often recover the arrow. I would add the need to get it back to camp, dragging it, or lashing it to your vehicle to get it back. Like you said, in a survival game it would give this cool hunting in small doses, just one of your activities, instead of the only activity like in these two games I'm playing.

I caved again and picked up the New England Mountains reserve DLC. I wanted to wait for a sale to feel smart, but I now had plenty of time on each reserve I do have, aside from maybe the savanna and Siberia, where I've done a few hours at least on each, but so far I prefer more of a forest and farmland sort of set up. Growing up in New Jersey and spending my youth hunting in northeastern Pennsylvania made me think that the New England map would be the closest match. And it is, on the southern half of the map There's a river valley that bisects the map east to west, and south of this line it feels a lot like the terrain I've hunted, Bradford and Sullivan counties in NE PA, if anyone is familiar with the region. Private land near Endless Mountains State Park, along the upper end of the Susquehanna River. Sort of sitting in the center of the Poconos and Catskills.

The land in the reserve lacks the populations, sparse as it is, and the dairy farms that dot the area. And the soil isn't full of clay haha. But otherwise it really is a close match and this is already one of my favorite reserves. The mountains as we call them in the east are really more like ridges. Rounded across the crest and running a long distance along the spine. What geologists call a dissected plateau. The way the rivers 'cut' the land looks great too, just as it was when I hunted. So this map feels like home. North of the river valley the terrain is heavier and more rugged, more like Vermont or Maine. This reserve is very good for whitetail hunting, Has quite a few class 1 small game, like 'coons, cottontails, bob-whites, ringnecks, ducks and turkey. Well, coons are class 2. Also has bobcats, coyotes, red and gray fox. Black bears and moose are the big game in the preserve. So a nice mix, and the first reserve where I feel like I want to carry a shotgun.

I caved again and bought the Duck and Cover DLC for four bucks to get the 20ga semi-auto and birdshot and slugs. I have a 12-ga over/under but not the score to unlock birdshot or slugs. Just buckshot, so it is slow going gaining that mastery. Buying Duck and Cover just gives that kit for 'free' and now I can use that 20ga for everything from rabbits, pheasant and duck to deer. Only holds 3 rounds. Must have a magazine plug dammit. They'll probably sell a DLC to give you two more shells.

This shot really feels like the region I'm talking about, maybe if those hills in the background were one contiguous thing. It's too early in the season to feel like buck season really, this is like late September judging by the foliage. But it would have been nice to hunt deer in a light jacket instead of foot-deep snow, so here I get to head out when the weather is still nice

That New England reserve is the most recent released for Call of the Wild, coming out this past December. They release a new one every six months like clockwork. Way of the Hunter is looking to at least keep pace, and has announced its new reserve, Aurora Shores (Alaska). Looks fantastic, and from the time I've spent hunting the Yukon reserve in Call of the Wild I suspect it will be a great addition to the game.




I assume this is included for those of us with the season pass? Wouldn't be the first time a season pass didn't net me the goods. But surely, as I've not gotten anything with the pass yet, this one will be.

Edit: The first two DLC reserves are included in the pass

Looks like you have to play it as a woman.

I mentioned above how I focus tightly on my shooting. I try to maintain as high a percentage as I can, looking to take good shots with a high chance of success. And not just hitting the target, but hitting the proper spots to ensure a clean harvest. Many times shots are presented that I pass over, wanting to improve my position, the angle or the range. I don't shoot at running animals, because these are more likely to miss, or at least miss the vitals, resulting in a wounded animal. Call of the Wild tracks this, while Way of the Hunter does not. Honestly I wish there were far more statistics tracked, especially with each individual weapon, and harvests broken down by type and weapon. Like how many whitetails have I taken with a .243? .308? 420-gr arrow? What it does track is fairly basic, but you can at least see your shooting percentages with each weapon category. Missing any shot bothers me and is only forgotten if I hit my next six or ten on the bounce.

Consistency seems like a worthy thing to strive for. How's this?






Having identical percentages for every weapon type, after that many shots is crazy. What are the chances? I've since hit three straight bow shots to bump the bow percentage and foul my consistency haha. I feel like I should be hitting 90% so I've got work to do. If it weren't for those "missed" shots from the Blue Trail mission described earlier, and a few others that inexplicably didn't find the target I would be on 90. A word of warning to any new players, shooting prone risks a blocked muzzle, even when you think it's clear. It's as if going prone lays the rifle on the ground, instead of supported several inches above it. The scope picture is clear, but there's a risk your shot hits terrain. This happened a few times when I took shots across a lake. I went prone on one shore, took the shot across, and nothing happened when it was a sure fire hit. I think the round must have hit the ground after leaving the muzzle, even though to look at it you would think there's no obstruction. So if you're going to take prone shots, make sure there's a ledge or drop off under your barrel, like atop a boulder. I take virtually every shot from a crouch as a result.

And yeah, the ATV scares a lot of animals

As mentioned, I consider myself a whitetail deer hunter in Call of the Wild. I still take them as they come, but whitetails have been my main focus. It's what I hunted growing up, and just kept on with it after getting in to these hunting games.

I got the achievement "Whitetail Hunter" for harvesting 50 whitetail deer. 3.2% of the player base have done so. I suspect this will be one of the most common of the achievements for harvesting 50 of a certain animal type.

I doubt any other type is close. If I had to guess I'd say I am probably closest with moose. They are easy to hunt, you can get close to them, they are slow and big targets. Great to hunt with the bow actually, using 600-gr arrows.

The most difficult animals to hunt for me have probably been the coyotes and foxes. Small, fast, elusive, highly alert. Their caution often has them clearing out before you get a spot.

And there are still quite a few I've yet to take. Have yet to take a quail, for instance, or a lion. Was in Africa last night to unlock more of the outposts and lookout towers and saw a number of lions, but all females. I want my first lion to be the King of the Jungle, err, savanna. And honestly they frighten me a little.

Each time I hop to a different reserve I like to spend the first bit unlocking another outpost. The more you've opened up, the more options you have to plan hunts. Zipping around on the ATV makes it a lot easier to do, but spooks everything within 500m. So I just bite the bullet, get it done, and then can settle down to hunt. Many outposts in both games are situated close to lakes, and other prime spots. Take a look at the wind, then pick an outpost to fast travel to. This has you arrive silently, and now you can proceed to hunt upwind. The more outposts you've unlocked, the more options and flexibility you have depending on the wind and which type of animals you're looking for. So I advise to explore early and often, get the maps opened up. I'll save a few for stalks, so I have worthwhile destinations while hunting on foot. The ATV though is gold.

I think if you were playing the game in 2017, with only two reserves, spending all this effort to open them up was less of an issue. You'll get around the whole map sooner or later. But with 13, it's sort of a necessary thing.

Headed back to Hirschfelden last night. This is one of the two base game reserves. A nice mix of forests and fields. My favorite animals to hunt on all the maps are the deer-like ones. Between all of the reserves Call of the Wild has the following that I lump in to this category

Elk (Roosevelt and Rocky Mountain)
Moose
Caribou
Red Deer
Reindeer
Mule Deer
Whitetail Deer
Blacktail Deer
Fallow Deer
Roe Deer
Musk Deer
Sika Deer

That's a nice selection and doesn't include all the similar stuff like Ibex, Pronghorn, Springbok and Lesser Kudu which are goats, antelope and sheep rather than deer. But they all hunt rather the same.

In Hirschfelden I was having success with bison, hunting them with the new bow I had just unlocked. It's called the Hawk Edge 70, the top compound bow in the game. It was locked behind bow score, and it took quite a while to gain enough. About 1800 points, which I reckon was somewhere between 40 and 50 bow kills So that is quite the hill to climb. This bow has the highest peak draw, meaning it shoots faster arrows, flatter and has the best penetration. It can easily take down any thing in the game, with the right arrows. The Hawk Edge also costs 48,000 so not cheap even after doing so much to qualify for it.

Eventually I came to a large lake and ambled down quietly to the shore to have a look about. At the far (west) end of the lake I spotted this Red stag. I was sure I had found a top trophy. I mean, look at that rack! When you hit the key to 'spot' the animal, an outline appears, which can be seen here. I'm sure it can be turned off? But I keep it on. Helps now and then in the brush and tall grass. Not realistic, but yeah.



In the upper right you see the details the spot reveals. There are skills and perks you can take as you level up, and some of these provide additional information when spotting, or reading tracks. In this shot you see the animal's health at the top (75-100%). Below that is the animal class (6), which dictates which ammunition is proper. His state is 'nervous', either because he heard a shot I had recently taken, or he detected me through sight, sound or smell. His action is drinking, obviously. A weight range estimate, and in the bottom right a trophy range estimate. Mythical is a representation of how difficult the animal is to hunt.

Trophy score determines whether the harvest is bronze, silver, gold, diamond or Great One. The "harvest check" also factors in. In order to pass the harvest check you must meet four requirements. Proper ammunition, vital organ hit, two or fewer shots, and you must not hit the trophy organ, like the head on a deer (antlers).

I provided this super handy link earlier, and I'll post it again


Call of the Wild Class and Cartridge

At the bottom are tabs that drill down to specific information about each animal on every reserve, such as trophy thresholds and max weights. The upshot is that as you take those perks and reveal more information, you can be selective in which animals you harvest. In the case of Red Deer, Gold is above 182.2, and diamond is 251. the red deer in the image is estimated between 202-248. So, a gold, not a Great One as I hoped when I first saw him through the glass. I mean, look at that rack!

In this shot, the deer is about 330 yards away. I can hit at that distance, but here I quietly stalked forward until I had reduced the range to 223 yards and took the shot with the .308. You can see the green wind cone indicating the wind is out of the northwest, so favorable to me from this position, and not something I needed to worry about as I closed the range. Double lung shot and he dropped after a few steps. In the end, not the diamond or great one I had thought I had found (that rack!), but a very solid gold harvest and he is now displayed in my lodge. A really nice trophy.

Is there a release date for the WotH Alaska map? I can't find anything in the official announcement.

Yes, sir. DLC is scheduled to drop February 23

https://www.toomuchgaming.net/blog-news/way-of-the-hunter-aurora-shores-dlc-adds-14-new-species

That article title says "14 new species" but I bet that will prove a stretch. Depends on how you look at it, but it's difficult to think of a Roosevelt Elk as a new species compared to any other sort of elk, but I think that's the hair being split here. Regardless I'm very much looking forward to it. Caribou especially.

Not a big fan of crossbows if I'm honest. I mean, they are cool and all, but not really what I want to hunt with. A compound bow would be more my style. But I'm sure I'll give them a run out. I wonder if there are any new firearms? I'm hoping for more lever-actions.

One thing to note is the size of the reserve quoted in this article. It says 64 square km / 24.7 square miles. That would be half the size of Nez Perce or Transylvania, and make it the same size as Call of the Wild reserves.

This from Nine Rocks says the price will be $9.99

https://ninerocksgames.com/posts/announcing-aurora-shores-dlc

Funny story. I noticed I got the new .50 modern muzzleloader in Call of the Wild. Must have come with the New England reserve?

Anyway, I took it out last night to complete a mission that required it (take a turkey with a bow and a moose with the muzzleloader). I was slowly stalking near a lake and spotted a black bear not far off. She sensed me and rose on her hind legs like they do but I wasn't prepared to shoot and I stopped to see what she did. She lost me as I had stopped moving and began walking, straight toward my position. Straight on with her head low I could not get a good shot at the vitals. Finally, she was too close, just 15 yards and I tried to shoot past her head and hit the chest. But whatever I hit didn't take her down and she came for me.

I went to shoot again, but saw I had no round loaded. Hit reload and well, it's a freakin' muzzleloader! Doh! She hit me at a full run and took a nice wedge out of my health bar. The lesson is, always make the first shot count with a muzzleloader!

Waiting for a sale doesn't work if you just buy the stuff before the sale arrives.

Picked up the Cuatro Colinas reserve (Spain) and the Assorted Sidearms Pack. I've been carrying handguns more, and I wanted the 10mm Glock. I've been carrying the .454 handcannon in reserves with class 9 dangerous animals (cape buffalo, bison, lions) and a .45 revolver in the others. The .45 is class 2-5, and the 10mm is 2-6. I don't intend to use it for class 6, like Red deer, as it is pushing the limit and even though the integrity is maintained, I can imagine some long tracks. But it does mean that it will hit harder in class 2-5 than the .45 and make it a good wolves defense weapon.

A word about wolves.... In Way of the Hunter, wolves are handled smartly. Wolves are predators, and as such they have fantastic senses. They are especially wary of other predators. Like you, the hunter. When they detect you they leave. Elusive and canny. In Call of the Wild, they've made the wolves hyper-aggressive, and if they are within range they will attack. In a circling pack, and you had better be prepared. In an effort to make the game feel dangerous, the devs ignored natural behavior and frankly I don't like it. When I hunted I encountered wolves, coyotes and bears, and none of them were interested in sticking around. Not to mention attacking.

I dislike it so much that I don't spend as much time as I might on the maps that have them, Yukon, Medved Taiga and now Cuatro Colinas, although these are Iberian wolves and not gray so maybe they behave differently, but I suspect it's just a reskin and otherwise the same. I'll see if the wolves in Spain are more naturally wary, and so far they've kept to themselves. But I'll have that 10mm JC Denton special now if they decide otherwise.

I wish there was a little aggressiveness from wolves in WotH, but it should be more realistic and not as overdone like in CotW. For example only when you track an injured wolf. Or when it takes too long to find a killed deer, the carcass might be claimed by wolves or a bear, that need to be scared away.

Where I life the rare cases of aggressive behaviour by wolves happened when people were accompanied by dogs. If we ever get dogs in WotH I would like to see something similar.

Right, that sort of behavior should only occur, in my view, if the animal is wounded or cornered. Yesterday on the Cuatro Colinas map I was attacked by a pack, and it was bad in about every way possible.

It was nearly dark, and I was in a field with high grass, making the circling and darting wolves hard to spot. I did have my new Glock, which holds 15 rounds, and I was popping them off at the fleeting targets. Finally they ran off. But two bronze harvests resulted since I hit one more than twice (bronze is the worst), and the other outside the vitals. I hit a third evidently, because I lost my consecutive harvest bonus, so a third wolf must have died but I didn't find him. Two shots missed, dropping my shooting percentage, dammit. And one of the wolves got a strike in, taking a chunk out of my health. The only positive is some handgun score.


New longest shot. 443 yards. The aim point was just below the spine so you can see the drop over a quarter mile. Would have been a heart shot I think, but hit the leg bone and didn't penetrate enough.

I had been sinking all my time in to Call of the Wild. I prefer the hunting in Way of the Hunter, but the diversity in Call of the Wild keeps pulling me in that direction.

But I fired up Way of the Hunter to have a bash about, and get back in the groove in anticipation of the new reserve coming out next week. Within a half hour I was on the trail of a five-star mule deer in the river valley south of Bear Den Ranch. I found a herd in a thicket close by the river, on the western bank. The dense spruce trees and tall grass prevented a proper look, but my binoculars and hunter sense showed there was a five-star in among them. I could see just glimpses of brown fur through the gaps, and it was not possible to pick out which glimpse was of the five star.

I attempted to angle off to the river bank, hoping that would change my line of sight and give me a spot, but as I got within about 70 yards I spooked them, and they bounded away, crossed the river, and through the fields, disappearing up the mountainside in to the forest. Dammit. Since I hadn't fired I wondered if I were patient, if the herd would eventually return. I crossed the river behind them, and climbed a tower to give me an elevated view of the surrounding area, while keeping watch in the direction the mulies had gone. About 30 minutes later I heard a mule deer calling in that direction. Hoping it was the group with the five star I glassed in that direction and caught a glimpse of a doe slowly picking her way down the hill among the trees. Then another, and then the rest, including this magnificent buck. They were on track to pass directly below my stand.

But they were so bunched up that the deer in front of the five star masked my shot in the vitals of my target. Patiently I waited, worried that every step closer increased the odds I would be sensed or seen. At about 150 yards the big buck bumped in to the deer in front, which caused him to veer slightly, unmasking his chest and I took the shot with the .308. My zero had been slightly too long, and as the recoil subsided I thought about how I failed to hold under. But surely that was a a kill shot. The deer reacted to the shot, and bounded off to the left, behind a big spruce. I climbed down from the stand and walked around that spruce to harvest my deer. And he was gone!

Dammit! Found the blood spot where the impact was and the analysis said "animal survived". Dammit. This was a done deal, yet it wasn't. Game on, big mulie buck!

In Call of the Wild, spooking deer and making them run away is recoverable. I can either follow them, and I'll usually find them. Or if I just wait quietly, most of the time they'll come back to resume whatever activity they were involved in when I so rudely interrupted. But in Way of the Hunter it's much harder. The spooked animals clear out and rarely come back. Of course they just had, but I hadn't taken a shot yet. Now I had fired my weapon and I knew they wouldn't be back. So I decided to see if I could stalk them down. All I had was a direction and a massive reserve, in which they could now be anywhere.

The terrain and wind were not in my favor. The trees were thick, and the terrain rugged enough that sight lines were short. Advantage, deer. But I kept slowly making my way in the direction I hoped they would be. After about ten minutes I caught a mule deer call a couple hundred yards further on. It could be my herd, or any other too. As I closed to within about 90 yards of where I thought they were, they spooked again and split. Dammit. Back to stalking, I again got a call, and closed, spooking them yet again. They're highly alert, even more so than usual due to being shot at and chased, but I was in it now.

Again I slowly kept stalking in their direction and this time the call came from upwind, as I had worked around the flank a little bit. But the heavy terrain prevented any look. I kept working around the hill and as it fell away out of sight I saw them. 90 yards away and with the five star standing broadside. I was so excited and happy to have tracked them down that I didn't even risk a screenshot (though perfect it would have been) as maybe this magnificent buck would move in the instant it would take to hit the key. I took the shot from 90 yards and down he went.

The harvest screen revealed the problem with shot number 1. Because of the high down-angle of the shot from the stand, and the failure to properly hold under at that range, the first bullet had entered the deer's neck just below the jaw, forcing it to travel though a couple feet of flesh before hitting the lung. That took all the energy out and it only penetrated the lung a couple of inches. Not enough for a kill I guess. Second shot though from the flank was lethal. But I really wish I had taken that screenshot! What a perfect presentation.

This is my second five star mule deer. And it's the first harvest of a five star where I think it's probable that it is the result of my herd management. This river valley is where i do most of that work, and especially on mule deer. It's close to the main base, so it gets the most attention. Whether it actually is the result of my work is impossible to say. Just speculation, but it's good to think the effort may be paying off.

I failed to get the shot of the shot, but here he is above the fireplace.




Back to Call of the Wild.... I've been talking about wolves throughout this thread, how they give me a hard time. Yesterday I got my revenge. I was hunting the Siberia map, called Medved Taiga. At a frozen lake I tracked a nice reindeer buck, taking him down with the .308 on the ice. After the shot a pack of wolves seemed to decide they would relieve me of my burden. But out here on the ice I had clear fields of fire, a rifle and a scope.

Hunted the Yukon reserve last night, and had great success. Bison, wolves, caribou, moose and red foxes. There are a few amazing spots to hunt, with fantastic sight lines, and full of game. There is the outpost in the northwest, in the burnt-out Teekon forest area. No undergrowth, no leaves or needles on the trees. All those trees make it feel a little surreal, and long range shots will have to be threaded between them. But if you're looking for a good spot to get a lot of shooting in, this is it. It is particularly dangerous, the animals here are not fooling around. You need a good big-game weapon, like the .300 or .338. But the clear views mean you can get the drop if you're attentive and observant.

Here, a pack of wolves takes a break before the next round.



Leaving there after putting pressure all over the area, I headed southeast, toward the center of the map, to unlock a lookout tower and an outpost. Along the way I just had to hop off the quad to snap this shot. Beautiful!





Again, amazing sightlines and views across this vast expanse of heathlands, or plains or whatever it might be called. Only spoiled by the 500m limit to render animals.

Back to Way of the Hunter. Alaska coming Thursday!

I told the story of the five-star mulie a couple posts back. I've another tale to tell.

Fired Way of the Hunter back up and went on a stalk. I carried the Steyr Monobloc .308 and the Steyr SM12 .300 Mag. This covers class 5 and 6. Fast traveled to Rivermouth outpost, as the wind was out of the north, and then I can stalk upwind back toward Bear Den between the river and the railroad. This has been my favorite hunt. The Rivermouth camp sits a couple miles south of the Bear Den Ranch It's mostly open, gently rolling fields with waist-high grass, with some pine forests to the east along the tracks. Good deer country, but also good for pheasant and fox. I took my five-star Bighorn here, right on the railroad tracks. Those are very rare in this area, but there he was.

After reaching the camp I headed west toward the river, and turned north as I got close to it. Went about a half mile, slowly in a crouch, stopping every few yards to listen and glass the surrounding terrain, finding a few pheasant and hearing a fox in the distance. I wasn't armed for this class of game, so I pushed on to the north. After another couple hundred yards I heard a mule deer call about 250 yards north of my position. I arrowed in on the azimuth. The herd of mulies were eating, in the field, just on the edge of a forest. A mixed stand of evergreens and deciduous. The terrain was unfavorable, as the ground fell away gently all the way to the edge of the forest. So as you move forward you never quite reveal more of the deer, they always seem just out of view. I could see their heads, and a few were bucks. I kept closing, slowly, and as quietly, as I could.

Finally I found a small rise that gave me a better view and I was glassing them, trying to decide on which one to target. There was a two-star mature buck and I settled on him. All of them had their butts toward me, and that's not a good shot. So I waited patiently for them to move, and hopefully give me a better shot at the broadside.Patience, of course, is a requirement in these games, if you want to be successful. While I was waiting for a better shot, and glassing the herd, I heard a whitetail call from beyond the mule deer, farther in to the forest.

I turned the binoculars in that direction and a five-star flashed through the glasses. As your optics pass over an animal, its info is displayed in the upper right of the screen, as long as you have Hunter Sense enabled. It shows the trophy rating, the animal's alert state and more. So of course upon seeing this I switched targets. I'm after trophies now. I've passed through the earlier stages. Way of the Hunter emphasizes those phases

To paraphrase

-- Shooting Stage. The hunter is happy to get out in the field and fire his weapon at targets.

-- Limit Stage. The hunter has the skills to successfully harvest game and proves it by taking his limit

-- Trophy Stage. The hunter is no longer satisfied with taking a full tag. Now he seeks the best examples.

-- Method Stage. Trophies alone are no longer enough, and the hunter seeks to challenge himself with the method. Bows, muzzleloaders and other skillful methods are attractive.

-- Sportsman Stage. The hunter is content. He has mastered his craft and has the trophies to prove it. Now he seeks to share what he knows with new hunters, and seeks to promote conservation and teach newcomers the proper ethics and methods of hunting.

Until we get bows, muzzleloaders and other skill options, I'm firmly in the Trophy Stage. Herd management mechanics mean I still harvest other types, primarily targeting one-star matures, but it's just a means to the end, producing, and harvesting, top-tier animals. And I sprinkle in some Sportsmen stage in this thread, but of course no one posts in this thread, so I concentrate on the trophies!

By switching over to the whitetail herd I had to be mindful of the mulies. How to get closer to the whitetails, without spooking the mule deer, and having them all run off. The whitetails were moving east to west, about twenty yard inside the forest. This meant narrow windows as they passed behind, and appeared from out of, a mix of bushes and trees. I got in a good position with an aperture of about four feet and waited for the big buck to appear. He did, but a doe walked beside him, between us. She masked the front of the buck, covering his vitals. They kept walking, and would soon pass out of view. It was now or never.

I took the shot from about 100 yards with the .308, just about flipping the tail of the doe as the bullet passed behind her and struck the big buck. I wanted to thread the shot in that tiny window to hit the rear of his lungs, but just missed by an inch and hit him in the belly. He took off and I tracked for a couple hundred yards, and found him. Sorry big buck, that was a poor shot. Not clean. But five-stars are rare, and I took the risk. It paid off with a harvest, but I always look to do so in the quickest, cleanest manner.

I made an interesting discovery when viewing the harvest screen. This was the second time I had shot this deer. I knew I had never shot a five-star whitetail that I failed to take down. So I had taken a shot at this deer when he was something less than five-star, and as fortune would have it, this allowed him to then grow to five-star status. The first shot was a head-on, which hit his lung, but not enough to take him down obviously. I wonder when that was, and how many stars he was when that shot was taken? Pretty cool.

This is that five-star whitetail, looking at the trophy screen, and you can see how the trophy score is calculated. This one is five points better than my first five-star whitetail buck.



And here he is in the lodge alongside the first one, with a mule deer in the back. I set a goal of fifty five-stars, and I now have nine.

2x Whitetail Deer
2x Mule Deer
2x Pheasant
Red Deer
Bighorn Sheep
Mountain Goat

Alaska reserve releases today.

I posted a chart earlier showing suitability for various cartridges and animals at different ranges, but it was out of date, not showing all of the weapons added after release.

Here's a newer one

https://codeaid.github.io/woth-toolbox/firearms?q=steyr-monoblock

Patch notes. A reasonably priced sportscar ATV, and they fixed the shotgun penetration which I think was needed. The crouch bobbing on sloped terrain not fixed yet, but they said they are working on it.

- Added: 2 Crossbows
- Harpe WonderHit
- Apex Predator (available only in the Aurora Shores DLC story)
- Added: 2 Crossbow sights
- Overgaard Reliance Red Dot
- ZOOMXD TrueSight 1.5-5x32
- Added: 4 callers
- Primos The Great Big Can Doe Bleat
- Primos Big Bucks Rattling Bag
- Primos Ki-Yi Predator Call
- Primos The Original Wench Duck Call
- Added: 1 UTV - Vega Predator 1000 (9.999 credits)
- (MP) Tweaked: Client unable to claim a downed animal (partial fix)
- Tweaked: Increased the penetration of shotgun pellets
- Tweaked: Blood trails have an additional red glow in Hunter sense on the Explorer difficulty
- Tweaked: Vehicle radio playing in the vicinity of the vehicle
- Tweaked: Improved trophy value calculation
- Tweaked: Improved character animations
- Tweaked: Improved various effects in the Environment
- Tweaked: HUD notifications no longer overlap cutscenes
- Tweaked: Improved scene lighting in the Bullet camera screen
- Tweaked: Caller range increased to 250m/273y
- Tweaked: Animals are more likely to vocalize in response to callers
- Tweaked: Animal icons on the hunting map
- Fixed: Animals occasionally fast traveling with the player
- Fixed: Animals occasionally freezing in position
- Fixed: Camera shaking when moving in prone position
- Fixed: Blood track inspect occasionally not showing expiration
- Fixed: Player spawning with last saved stance after fast travel
- Fixed: Objective helper counter updating properly
- Fixed: Hold breath icon now showing when using shotgun
- Fixed: Rotation of taxidermy stands in the Nez Perce Valley lodge
- (MP) Fixed: April model animation fixes

I gave the new Alaska reserve a go in Way of the Hunter. It's not the wintry snowscape I might have been expecting. After all, hunting season in Alaska is August to October mostly, and this is what it looks like. It's half the size of the first two reserves, and the same size as the Call of the Wild reserves. It's pretty wide open. Lots of long sight lines and shooting opportunities. Some new species like bison, caribou and sitka seer. A few recycles, like new elk and moose variants. Gotta play as a woman. Story stuff I could do without. New reserve, arm up and go hunting is the way I want it to be. Nothing forces me to do the story, but it does give you money, and in this case a free crossbow at the end. So I soldier through, usually with my headphones on the desk so I don't have to listen to it. Just see what task came out of all the chatter at the end.

No new firearms, which weren't promised, but I was hoping for a new rifle or two. I'd like to see a bolt-action .270. A bolt-action 6.5 Creedmoor. A lever-action .243 and .45/70. It would be cool if Nine Rocks struck the same sort of deal with Browning as they did with Remington and Steyr. The shotguns are in a good spot with semi-auto 20 and 12ga. Pumps, side-by-sides and a 16ga over/under that goes with pheasant hunting like bacon goes with eggs. Matter of fact I think 16ga shell boxes almost always have a pheasant pictured on them

I have the pass and the DLC was already ready to go, a 9 gig download, and ran first time no issues. Smooth release.

I hope this gives the game a shot, because numbers were way down. Looked the other day and there were about 400 players on. There was a big spike today as you'd expect, but let's see if it drops off after a few days like after the initial release. It's a good hunting game and I think deserves better. I like both of these games, but prefer Way of the Hunter when the boots are one the ground. When it's just me, my rifle and a whitetail it's closer to what I want out of a hunting game. But it needs to connect with more players.

The 1.22 update brought a new UTV option, priced at a quarter of the cost of the first one. Much better, and I bought it. I could afford the expensive one, literally, technically, but I have to keep a taxidermy fund. So i wasn't prepared to blow all that cash on it if it meant my next five star couldn't be displayed

It's not all that different to the jeep really, maybe a little better in rough country, a little smaller to fit in certain places, but you could save the cash and not be missing much.

I finally picked up the .270 and have been using it in Alaska. I had been carrying the .308 for a while and wanted to mix it up. Don't care for pumps, but who cares, so I bought it. It's said the Remingtons are less accurate than the Steyrs. If so it's minor.

Accuracy aside, this cartridge outperforms that .308. Not by much, especially at short range. Over distance the .270 is better, a couple hundred joules at 250 yards. Both are perfectly suited to all the class 5 game. The .270 gives you a little more margin when crossing in to class 6. It should fly flatter too, but if so I can't tell. Both guns are more than accurate enough and any competent shooter is going to do just as well with either one.

The .30-06 is a little more powerful inside 100 yards, but the .270 passes it beyond that range. The 7mm and .243 don't compete really. So yeah, the .270 is probably the best class 5 cartridge currently in the game in my view, especially at typical ranges of 150-250 yards.

Hopefully we will see another option or two introduced down the line chambered in .270. It's the cartridge I hunted deer with growing up, a Browning bolt-action, after I had paid my dues with the .30-.30 lever action. It's a perfect deer cartridge. My dad swore by the .270, and for those of a certain vintage, the well-known Outdoor Life writer Jack O'Connor did too.I can remember reading his shooting articles as a kid in the 1970s. He was always pictured with his Remington Model 70, with a sheep or big deer in some remote, exotic place -- to me at that time. The cartridge isn't as fashionable these days. I think a big part of why it was so popular is that it has excellent ballistics, shoots very flat with a high muzzle velocity compared to other competing cartridges. This makes a rifle more range resistant. The flatter the trajectory, the less error when the range is misjudged.

In today's hunting, rangefinders are mainstream and so a hunter can find that sort of accuracy with a lot more cartridges. But it's still a great choice for class 5 game in the game, and like i said gives a little more margin to take the class 6 game like elk, moose and bison. The fact that it's a pump has no real consequence other than perception. We don't work the bolt or lever or pump. And firing follow-up shots is something I don't do with rifles (shotguns are another matter), so how the rifle re-chambers doesn't matter. A Browning bolt-action however would feel right.

I was a little dismissive of the UTV a couple posts back, but I used it for a mission and it was really handy. A lot of distance had to be covered in this one, and the trails I followed were rather narrow and some of it on ledges near cliffsides. The jeep would have struggled on the same route, so the UTV utility went up in my view. Price for the Predator 1000 is 9,999 and that's palatable.

Got five-star number ten yesterday, a Wild Duck taken with the 12ga side-by-side Cinnamon Sky. Forty more to hit my target

Last night I thought, let's see if Call of the Wild DLC is finally on sale, and it is! I snapped up nearly everything I had yet to get. Bought the remaining reserves, tree stands and a couple weapon packs. All that for less than a twenty. Most of it is 60% off. Sale ends in a few hours, and as I can see from the participation in this thread, no one will care But it's a good time to get in to it with everything marked down so much.

New DLC coming for Call of the Wild on March 14.

Hunter Power Pack

Three new rifles.

.308 bolt-action. The .308 semi-auto is my most carried rifle as you can tell from this thread. But bolt-action rifles to me are the essence of what a hunting rifle should be. I would expect it to have a longer barrel and maybe be a little heavier, resulting in higher accuracy and less recoil. The .308 is one of the top cartridges in the 4-8 class, matched only by the .30-06 for expansion and penetration (the 7mm is 4-9 and a class of it's own, along with the much shorter ranged .45-70)

7mm bolt-action. Being class 4-9 makes this cartridge the most versatile in the game.I don't use the current one as it is single-shot break action, which I don't care for. A magazine-fed bolt-action option is very attractive, but I would rarely to never use it for class 9 game like cape buffalo. There are better options for that. Not sure I'll carry this one much, but it will have it's uses. It would be a good option to carry in the Hirschfelden reserve. Everything is class 6 or lower, except the class 9 bison. Good cartridge for this map.

.338 bolt action.. Same deal as with the 7mm. Only current option is a single-shot break-action. Another magazine-fed rifle in this very powerful cartridge is a nice option. This might bump the .300 from my lineup. There's some discussion in the community about whether they will model .338 Win Mag, or .338 Lapua, and those are very different cartridges. Either way, it's a nice new rifle for the biggest game.

I expect I'll be using all three. Of all the weapon pack DLC, I think this one is most well-suited to me, I like everything in it, and that's not usually the case.

Finally harvested my first lion last night. I've made it a point to make the first one a top trophy, and I passed up many shots on lions to get there. This one was Mythical. Found him resting at 350 yards, but had to wait a few hours for him to stand up. When he did he started moving and closed the range to 180 yards where I took the shot. One lousy point short of diamond rating, but a magnificent trophy for the lodge.

In the Way of the Hunter community there is a lot of debate about how the animal detection routines work. There's a very vocal section that complains endlessly about the game being too hard. I'm not interested in that debate. I really like the game and have success within the current framework. In response to one of the threads discussing this on the Steam forums I wrote a post to maybe give these players a different perspective. If you want to spend your time arguing and complaining, that's fine. But there are surely many players who just need to alter their approach. I'll re-post it here


------------------------------------------------------

Personally I don't find the animals too easily spooked. That's different than saying they don't spook easily. When I see the posts here talking about how much some players are struggling with getting in a good position to shoot, my first reaction is they are struggling with two things -- pace and tactics.

I play on what I call reduced Hunter difficulty. Hunter, but with some Hunter Sense options disabled. For the purposes in this post, I'll approach it from Hunter level perspective.

First, pace. The standard advice given when someone mentions that animals spook too easily is to slow down, make less noise, right? Invariably the player responds that he is doing that. But I doubt it's true. If it were, he would be closing in to good firing range. How slow is slow enough? That's a matter of experience. When you start having success you find that threshold, that point at which going over makes the animals bolt.

So really, if you are spooking animals at over 120 yards you are making too much noise. The only ways to not do this are stance and speed. It's clear that the animals use a meter-like mechanic to 'decide' when to run in a sound detection event. When the animal detects you the meter starts to fill, and when it hits the tipping point he bolts. They only way to reduce the meter is to stop moving. A lower stance or slower movement still fills the meter, albeit at a slower rate. For this reason, a crouched stop-and-go player can be more stealthy than someone who crawls continuously without stopping. Think of it like you're using a garden hose to fill a bottle with a hole at the bottom. The hose fills faster than the hole drains. So the only way to keep the bottle from overflowing is to shut off the hose. Or stop moving.

If you think you're already going slowly and quietly enough, but the animals are spooking outside 120 yards, you are not slow and quiet enough. I'm not going to argue about what it right or wrong, only with how it is. My advice? Crouch walk everywhere, stop frequently. Like move for 15 or 20 yards, then stop for ten seconds. Glass the terrain. Analyze the terrain. Use it your advantage. Inside 100 yards and things get much more difficult. At 70 yards you need to be inching forward, very, very slowly.

Which brings me to the second point, tactics. And I'll say that if you are going for 70 yard shots you are doing it wrong. These shots happen, and close range hunting is a skill to be mastered. It can be seen as a challenge of your ability to stalk stealthily. But that's advanced stuff. If you're just looking to harvest game, don't take 70 yard shots.

For this post I'm just talking about deer hunting. Small game, birds are another matter. For me, I'd guess my average deer shot comes from about 150-225 yards. Close enough to ensure accuracy, far enough away to keep the target calm. The key here is how you hunt the terrain. Taking 70 yard shots means you HAD to get close. Probably because you're hunting heavy terrain (forests/brush) or the lay of land forced your hand. Work to not do this, You dictate the shot, not the terrain.

This is done by hunting the spaces that will result in a favorable shot. Fields, lakes, open ground. Rivers and streams are good, but don't stalk along the bottom. Find the right level up a flanking hill or ridge. This elevates your sightlines. Down on the creek bottom your view range is reduced. Up the slope the surrounding terrain opens up. But there's a point where the tree tops begin to close in your sight lines once again. Somewhere in the middle is that perfect height to maximize viewing distance.

Same with lakes. Don't hunt the shoreline. Find an overwatch position some distance away. Always use the terrain to your advantage. Seek the high ground. One of the most common situations we find ourselves in is to come across an animal or herd that is reverse-slope. You can see the tops, maybe just the antlers, or know they're there from a call. The puzzle is how to get a clear shot at an animal you mostly cannot see clearly, it's terrain-masked. I think inexperienced or hasty hunters just try to go straight on in, as quietly as they think necessary. The problem is you have to get all the way to the crest before you un-mask that animal to get a shot. This is how we find ourselves facing a 70 yard shot, or more likely, a bolting herd and no shot at all.

Instead, glass the terrain and flank that position. It might mean retreating for 200 yards, then working around the flank for another few hundred so that your sight line in now along the axis of that ridge or crest that was causing the reverse slope. Now you have a clear shot from well outside the 'danger zone' of being inside 100 yards.

By all means challenge yourself with heavy terrain hunting if it appeals. But if you just want to take game and get some shooting in, slow down -- no, slower than that -- and take full advantage of the terrain. Move through it with always maximizing your sight lines as the goal. Stay out of the heavy stuff if you can, Hunt like you were doing it for real, and for real you'd be overlooking a field or two.

One more related point.... we always talk about stalking in to the wind, and this is a good approach. But don't limit yourself too much. I never want to stalk with any following wind. But that means the whole 180 degree frontal arc is good. And actually, in this game the herd animals eating, drinking and resting tend to orient in to the wind. So stalking in a crosswind presents more broadsides ahead of you, where stalking straight in to the wind presents a lot of tail shots.

How do you guys approach these games? Objective - based ("need a 5 star buck, I'll hunt exclusively that") or opportunity - based? Or perhaps a combination of both? I find that the objective - based gameplay can be very frustrating but also very rewarding, yesterday I did maybe a 2 hour stalk (lol I know) to specifically get a 4 star sheep but I was successful and it was extremely rewarding. I screwed up the same target (not the same animal) a few days ago and I quit the game in rage

Even after over 100 hours in the game, I've never seen any 5 star animals and maybe two or three times a 4 star, but I didn't shoot them. I almost exclusively hunt weak males, to improve populations genetics, but this doesn't seem to be have much effect. Either I am doing something wrong or I am hunting in the wrong areas. On the Steam forum I read that animals only reach 4/5 stars in certain territories, but I've no idea where these areas are.

For me, yeah, a combination of both. I consider myself a deer hunter. That's always what I'm going for. Whitetail deer are my favorite animal to hunt. But I sort of expand that idea to include all antlered animals. Elk, caribou, mulies, whitetails, sitka deer and so on. So I almost always carry a tier 5 rifle, either the .308, or the .270 which I've been carrying a lot more recently. But of course this leaves one slot free to carry another weapon. I mix the second slot up and then hunt whatever type of game is proper for it. A shotgun for birds and bunnies. A .223 or .30-.30 for fox and badgers, or a .300 for big game. A few times recently I've just carried a .308 since hunting with more than one long arm is kind of pushing it, even if the game allows it. So yeah, I'm a deer hunter but since I have a second gun most of the time I expand out to cover whatever I'm kitted out for. I'm firmly in the 'trophy stage' of the hunter arc, and the decisions I make on which animals to harvest are centered around managing the herd.

Juri, that's just bad luck I reckon. Five stars exist even without culling the proper animals With that much time in it's hard to believe you haven't encountered a few. You are overdue. So far I've managed to take eleven five-star animals.

2x Whitetail Deer
2x Mule Deer
2x Pheasant
Red Deer
Bighorn Sheep
Mountain Goat
Wild Duck
Lion

All but the red deer were in Nez Perce. Six of those were in the two-mile corridor where I do most of my work. It's the zone I've set up as my five-star laboratory. These maps are so big, and now there are three of course, that even with how many hours I'm sinking, and it's a lot at 150 already, that I'll never be able to manage the herd in all regions in the maps. So I focus on the river valley that runs south from Bear Den. Both whitetails, one mule deer, both pheasant and even the bighorn were taken here. The other mulie was taken in Diamond Drill. The laboratory lies in the space between Bear Den and the outpost camp in the Rivermouth region, bordered to the east by the railroad and to the west near the river (and the fields on either side of it). Doing the proper culling approach looks to have paid of here so far.

I still hunt all over the map, but it's only here that I do a stalk nearly every game day in this reserve, and it's paid off. Since the wind is most often from the north, I fast travel to the Rivermouth camp, then do a slow stalk back to the north toward Bear Den. Or the opposite if the wind switches around. Good spot for whitetails and mulies, pheasant, foxes and often elk. There should be a lot of badgers here, but these things are trolling me. It's wide open through here for good sight lines and detection range, and there's a water source straight down the middle. Near the tracks it's heavier terrain. I cannot say with any certainty if any five-star animal came about because of my herd management, but it sure seems to be paying off. Of course those ten five-stars are out of 250 harvests, so even then the rate is low.



It's primary habitat and private land that have higher fitness. I got passes in all except two private reserves in Transylvania by doing the missions. So there are three I have yet to unlock now that there is another one in Alaska. No way I'm gonna drop 4500 on them. Diamond Drill is really good, but difficult terrain to hunt. But five-stars only exist in primary habitat.

I have a few deer herds in Nez Perce that I strongly manage, but never had a male above 3 stars in them. Maybe the problem is that these herds are all in the central map area near the main lodge and not on private land.

Well, like I said, I've taken three deer in that area just south of the lodge. Chances are better in private land, but primary habitat is the only requirement. For whitetails and mulies, that is grasslands and lowland forest, which all of Cottonwood, Rivermouth, Small Paws, Black Fox Range, Greenacres and Diamond Drill are.

Actually, the first five-star whitetail was taken in the heavier terrain about half-way between the South Paws camp and Bear Den. But that is labroratory-adjacent

Dammit, I thought some discussion was afoot. Must have spooked

So, what are you guys up to? Where are you hunting? What are you harvesting? Which weapons are you favoring? Anything worth talking about?

New Way of the Hunter patch dropped a couple days ago.

New weapon pack DLC drop coming Tuesday in Call of the Wild.

I've been splitting my time between the two games. Last week there was a sale for Call of the Wild and I snapped up everything I had yet to get. That was four reserves (Mississippi Acres, Te Awaroa, Parque Fernando and Rancho del Arroyo) plus a few weapons and gear packs, plus the tree stands and tripods. With all this new stuff I've been putting more time in to Call of the Wild.

Honestly I'm not a huge fan of these reserves, and why they were the last ones I bought. Te Awaroa (New Zealand) is pretty good. And it comes with a new rifle and cartridge, the .303 (Enfield). The others are fairly dense terrain. I don't like hunting where I can't see very far. High grass, sunflowers, corn fields and that sort of stuff kinda sucks. How can you spot a fox in a cornfield?

As said above, I am firmly in the trophy stage of my hunter arc. I seek the very best animals, the best trophies. In Call of the Wild, these are the Diamonds and Great Ones. At this stage I've taken nearly 600 animals in this game. One diamond. One! So I started to wonder if I could be hunting dry holes. In other words, maybe the reserves don't even have any diamonds, and you can't find what isn't there. So I found a tool, an animal population scanner that you can grab off the Nexus

Call of the Wild Population Scanner

What it does is read your pop file and displays what is on the map, ranked by trophy rating and also displays rare furs. So you can see at a glance which maps have the top ones. It doesn't reveal where they are, only that they exist. This changes over time of course, but it's great to be able to see which reserves are currently the best ones for trophy hunting. In my current set up, two reserves far outclass the others for diamonds. Revontuli and Mississippi. Each has more than twenty diamonds. Revontuli is a dream to hunt. A lovely parkland sort of reserve with a good whitetail pop. One of my favorites.

Mississippi on the other hand is a terrible map to hunt. Really dense. And the one unique animal, the gator, is very difficult to hunt. But with so many diamonds on it I want to be successful here. I'm a pure stalker, never using callers or scents, blinds or stands. But this map is so close that I think it makes sense to at least start trying to take advantage of the stands (tree or tripod) to get my eyes above the undergrowth, so I'm branching out a bit.

Mississippi also comes with a new weapon, the .22H. It's a centerfire .22 cartridge and bridges classes 1 and 2, making it very useful indeed. It is loud for a .22, but it's nice to have one rifle to take both classes of game.

I'm constantly changing up my loadout, always mixing up what I am carrying. The class 4-8 weapons have the most variety.

-- 6.5 mm. I really want to like this one. 6.5mm is a very nice cartridge. High velocity, flat trajectory, low recoil impulse. Very popular these days. But I found it a little weak for larger deer (mules, reds). It makes a great Ibex weapon though. So in Quatro Colinas it's pretty good.

-- .303. WW2 bolt actions are cool. I like it, but it cost me a diamond. There's a mission where a diamond is served up on a plate but I didn't know it. At the end a diamond 'white wolf' comes after you. I shot it twice with the .303 which I happened to be carrying. The wolf was running, quartering in to me and I took a shot, which hit aft of the ribs and hit his belly. He kept coming and now straight on I hit him again in the chest. But the round didn't penetrate to the lung. He fell, but since I failed to actual hit the vitals, the harvest was downgraded to gold. Gutted.

-- M1 Garand. I really like this one. It's a Garand so duh. The .30-06 is probably the best 4-8 cartridge, with the best penetration and expansion. Just edges the .308. With a scope on it it is proving to be a very effective deer rifle and I've been carrying it a lot lately.

Call of the Wild DLC and update dropped yesterday. 22 gigs, good grief. Lots of fixes and some new additions, like a new trophy lodge and now loadouts can be saved. Pretty cool.

The Hunter Power Pack DLC brings three new rifles.

-- .308 bolt action. The .308 semi-auto AR-10 style is one of my main rifles. Really good cartridge for deer hunting. So was looking forward to a bolt-action. I expected it to be even more accurate, and bolts are the essence of what I think a hunting rifle should be. But it is actually less accurate than the semi-auto. It's a minor thing, and I probably wouldn't be able to tell were attributes not assigned, but it's still disappointing that the new rifle isn't more precise. Still, it's a bolt action, so will have a place in my rotation. Lightweight at 3.5

-- .338 bolt action. Win Mag evidently, not Lapua, and that's OK. Lapua is too much cartridge for this game anyway. I have yet to try it, but it's a nice upgrade for me over the break-action .338 we already had. A mag-fed bolt-action is a better option for me. But I won't use it much. Heavy at carry weight of 5, but I reckon it should be. A heavy hitter.

-- 7mm bolt action. This is the one that I've taken a shine to. Due to my break-action aversion, I never did buy the 7mm we already had. But it's an intriguing cartridge since it's one of just two (.45-70) in the game that cover class 4-9. That's everything from fallow deer to bison. But even if it holds integrity for class 9 it's rather underpowered for such game in my view. This one is also light at 3.5 and hits hard, good penetration and expansion and it is the one from this DLC that I've taken to. Good gun.

Way of the Hunter is having a 50% off sale at the mo. I decided to pick up the latest reserve, Tikamoon Plains (Africa). But I then noticed I already have it! Included in the season pass which I thought expired with Alaska, but nope, I've got Africa too.

When Africa was announced I was cool to it. I'd rather have 'everyday' sort of hunting locations, and more whitetails haha. But I love this new reserve. Top notch and a whole new set of animals to hunt. I definitely like this better than Call of the Wild's africa reserve.

I also picked up the Steyr rifle pack on sale. It has a .270 bolt and that's my new main rifle.

All in all I'm very happy with the new stuff.

Picked up the Emerald Coast reserve for Call of the Wild in the Steam autumn sale. That had been the only reserve I didn't have, as the most recent. Not all that interested in kangaroo hunting, but the outback terrain is nicely done. There are three deer, sambar, red and axis, so works for me.

I've dropped about 270 hours in to this game so far. In all that time I've taken just one diamond trophy and zero great ones. And I am trying. I know the rating threshold to each tier, and have the perk to give a rating range when you spot it. But still they elude me. I did finally manage to add a second diamond (the first was a capercallie very early on) and this one was a bison. I even use a population scanner so I know which reserve has the best trophies in it. It doesn't say where they are, just if they are present. This is a great hook for me as the sheer rarity motivates me to keep playing.

Shooting in COTW doesn't quite match how it is done in WOTH. It's simplified in comparison, and made worse by the insane oscillation when looking through a scope. It's like naval gunnery, timing your salvo for the trough of the swell. It's an artificial difficulty. But I've gotten used to it. I obsess over my shooting percentage as I think I talked about earlier in this thread. I've now taken about 820 shots and maintain a percentage of 90%. I want every shot to be a good one, well-placed and I hate to miss. The scope sway makes this harder than it should be. One advantage of this game in comparison to WOTH is it is easier in COTW to reach a good firing position. It's rather like playing a submarine sim. Good shooting technique is necessary, but success is probably more a function of proper positioning and it's easier to find game and work yourself in to a proper spot before taking the shot in Call of the Wild.

It's not three deer species in Emerald Coast, but six. Sambar, red, axis, hog, fallow and javan rusa.

And it's not only 'outback' as I had suggested. Now that I've been around the map it is just as diverse as any reserve.

Since picking up the Tikamoon Plains African reserve for Way of the Hunter I've spent quite a bit of time there. The Alaskan reserve introduced crossbows, and Tikamoon Plains brought compound bows. I think bows are probably better suited to other reserves, but the missions and achievements in Tikamoon are geared toward bow hunting and I've taken to it quite nicely indeed. Playing on Hunter or Ranger difficulty gives the highest animal awareness and senses. Combine this with the open terrain, long ranges and big animals and it is a stiff challenge.

The game has an achievement, called Bow Down Mister, for taking one of every species with a bow in Africa. Last night I took the final species, a hyena. Man, what a challenge this was. The first bow harvest was a male lion. I had spotted him lounging about from about 500 yards, then took about 45 minutes to stalk in on his position. He could have sauntered off or bolted at any time. But I got lucky, and went very, very slowly over the last 150 yards to reach a shooting position. Took the shot from 49 yards and it was a good one. Then spent the next couple of weeks hunting each one in turn.

On this difficulty (Hunter) the animals are highly alert, some say too alert, and getting within bow shot range was not easy. Many times I managed to spook the herd before getting in position, but I stuck with it and did it in the end. I used the Skye Lock-on with the 250 arrows and red dot sight. Just .1% of the players have done this, making it my most rare achievement. This might be more a reflection of how few have attempted it than how difficult it is. But then again, it isn't easy.

There's a sale right now for Call of the Wild, with the lowest pricing I've seen.

Call of the Wild @ Steam

Base game is three bucks. Reserves are two to five dollars. Weapon packs are about a dollar. ATV too.

I'd suggest getting the Seasoned Hunter bundle since it includes the ATV, tents, modern rifle pack and a couple of good DLC reserves. Then add other stuff ala carte. That bundle, plus another four reserves and every weapon pack you like could be covered with thirty dollars.

I see that things haven't changed much around here! Still somewhat alone In you´re extensive write ups Derek. Let´s see If I can add to It a bit and make you´re effort more worthwhile then It already Is...

Played a lot of CotW some years ago, lucky for me It got me through some rough times because the game Is so beautiful to look at, and for that reason among others It can be a walking simulator. I would just sink In to It´s Immersion and forget reality, It really helped me In the worst time of my life so CotH has a special place for me. I am also a outdoor guy who hikes a lot and does enjoy bushcrafting and anything related with the nature and It´s sports. I been tempted to fire It up again after all these years but I am afraid It would bring back some memories that I want to forget. Still, the game Is awesome and the Apex game engine Is second to none IMHO.

With that said, I have had WotH on my radar since It´s release but there´s one thing keeping me away. Have they fixed the need zones? I have only red about this so that´s why I ask. In CotW, If you abuse hunting In need zones, the herd will find another, or change their need zone habits, which Is not the case for WotH, or at least that´s how It was not to long ago from what I have red.

Someone (@Crane Hunter) mentioned that this would make for a great survival game, and I and a lot others agree that the Apex game engine would work great for that too. Their Is another game that I also enjoy and Is great for solo, and PVE which also uses the Apex engine, thus looks equally gorgeous, that Is Generation Zero. In this case you hunt down (or they hunt you) mechs, you also build bases, look for survivors and better gear etc. I have plenty of solo game hours on this one too. In some way, It reminds me of Tales from the Loop, which Is a RPG board game developed by Free League Publishing. They also did a TV series about the story with the same name, although I like the boardgame (RPG) better and have other games by Free League Publishing (Coriolis, Twilight 2000, and Forbidden Lands) which I play using the Foundry VTT app, or with my girlfriend and friends. This could be great for some of us here on SimHQ

Would write up more but have some arm pain that I need to keep tabs on, sorry.

Red

Thanks for convincing me to buy the game. Plus the bundle that DBond recommended.

I will try it out in the holiday. Think there will be some quiet days then.

Have fun!