Ability to carry animals carcasses

[thekillergreece]

We should be able to carry animal carcasses to certain places. For example, I killed a deer in the middle of the fishing pond which has risk of wolves so I want to grab it and get it to my base safely and drop it there and take it's meat and so on. Same goes to wolves and rabbits. We should not be able to carry bears though.

Carrying a deer requires ton of energy (Three arrows <<<) while wolves, two arrows and rabbit, just one arrow.

What do you think?

[Don Honas]

After a quick google search:

the weight of a wolf can vary between 25-55kg  (female) 30-80 kg (male). (70-180 pounds)

A deer can weight between 45 -70 kg. (100-150 pounds)

If you gut them you could shed of about 1/3 to 1/2 of the weight.

In other words you could probably be able to drag a carcass a good distance (after gutting) but carrying them would be very difficult.

But carrying rabbits would not be a problem they can weigh between 0.5 - 2 kg ( below 4 pounds), so why not!

[Kirby]

You could simply add together the weight of the hide, the guts and the meat. Since bones make up ~15% of the total weight it would be easy to add that on as well, slap the whole thing on your total weight and see if you can move.

This way the player could decide, depending on weight of clothing and equipment, if carrying an animal is actually an option or if certain parts need to be removed. I would not, however, give the player the option to remove bones, simply because removing bones from a carcass without damaging or removing intestines is unrealistic.

You could also give the option to move dead bodies. If we assume that the average Canadian male is 80.7 kg (177.9 lb) it´s obvious that the player can´t really carry a body, but dragging them would remove almost all of that weight in favor of drag. We don´t need drag calculations, I think that the developers should just try a few slowdown values and choose one that feels realistic. It should enable the player to get a dead body out of a house, but not to horde bodies to farm feathers.

[Kaisentlaia]

I was recently watching a National Geographic's series (Life below zero) and weirdly hunters don't drag their kills to shelters unless it's small game like rabbit, birds, foxes and wolverines. When it comes to bigger prey like caribou/moose/bear or even wolves they always field dress them, skin them, gut them, quarter them and then load the pieces on the sled/snowmobile and bring them home.

I still wonder why, but apparently there's a good reason irl to field dress big game and not small game. Maybe it's because they would be too heavy whole, and it doesn't make sense to drag all the innards and bones back to base just to discard them?

I agree that carrying rabbits would make sense and be an improvement, but I'm not so sure about deer and wolves.

[cekivi]

48 minutes ago, Kaisentlaia said:

I still wonder why, but apparently there's a good reason irl to field dress big game and not small game. Maybe it's because they would be too heavy whole, and it doesn't make sense to drag all the innards and bones back to base just to discard them?

Exactly. There's a lot of weight in an animal and field dressing it reduces that weight substantially. In real life you also don't want the inedible parts of the animal around your camp where it could attract predators and spread disease.

[deathbydanish]

On 1/20/2017 at 4:05 PM, Kaisentlaia said:

I was recently watching a National Geographic's series (Life below zero) and weirdly hunters don't drag their kills to shelters unless it's small game like rabbit, birds, foxes and wolverines. When it comes to bigger prey like caribou/moose/bear or even wolves they always field dress them, skin them, gut them, quarter them and then load the pieces on the sled/snowmobile and bring them home.

I still wonder why, but apparently there's a good reason irl to field dress big game and not small game. Maybe it's because they would be too heavy whole, and it doesn't make sense to drag all the innards and bones back to base just to discard them?

I agree that carrying rabbits would make sense and be an improvement, but I'm not so sure about deer and wolves.

I am glad to see there are others fans of that show out there. Now despite being outed as possibly fake, I've seen on that show Alaskan Bush People how they dealt with a deer that they may or may not have shot. The two hunters gutted the deer, and then made a sort of backpack out of the deer carcass, I think they broke its legs and lashed them together somehow to make arm straps. The other thing I could suggest is maybe a drag sled, you'd still need to gut the deer but you could keep the edible meat and the hide on and then drag it back to your home base. As it was mentioned before it seems like the field dressing happens because as soon as the deer has been dispatched, any nearby predators would then start to lock in on the smell and try to get a free meal from the hunters.

[Kaisentlaia]

Thanks @cekivi, that makes sense.

[FO4Builder]

I agree to a rabbit, im sure im able to pick that 0.5k furry thing up and take it to a warm place to gut.

[strigon]

On 1/20/2017 at 6:05 PM, Kaisentlaia said:

I was recently watching a National Geographic's series (Life below zero) and weirdly hunters don't drag their kills to shelters unless it's small game like rabbit, birds, foxes and wolverines. When it comes to bigger prey like caribou/moose/bear or even wolves they always field dress them, skin them, gut them, quarter them and then load the pieces on the sled/snowmobile and bring them home.

I still wonder why, but apparently there's a good reason irl to field dress big game and not small game. Maybe it's because they would be too heavy whole, and it doesn't make sense to drag all the innards and bones back to base just to discard them?

I agree that carrying rabbits would make sense and be an improvement, but I'm not so sure about deer and wolves.

 

Of course, in a situation where wolves and bears attack on sight, you're constantly at risk of freezing, and don't have a sled or snowmobile to load your haul onto, dragging the kill becomes a lot more viable.

Especially if we consider kills made on ice, where you can't keep warm with a fire.

[Kaisentlaia]

I personally don't mind the risk of freezing while harvesting carcasses, it's true that fires can't be started on ice when it's windy but I seldom do that and if I start freezing I just cancel the action and go warm up somewhere (or take the damage and finish harvesting when it's worth it). The risk of being attacked isn't that high since wildlife goes slow motion during time acceleration, I guess it would get worse while slowly crawling around dragging a heavy, smelly carcass. I reckon that not having a sled or snowmobile is the reason why it's more convenient to field dress and go home with 8-10kg of meat and guts, instead of dragging 45-70kg of deer around, if people don't want to do that with a vehicle irl I bet it would be even more exhausting by foot. Of course, dragging to base would be a big effort but dragging the whole carcass would absolutely make sense for example if it was a few meters away from a fishing hut. In that case making the effort of dragging for a short distance would allow the player to harvest from a much safer position.

Mind I know nothing about hunting, my assumptions are based on what I read/saw and could be wrong.  Of course in game the effort spent and the gain would be different, depending on how the mechanic would be implemented by the devs.

Having the choice to either drag or field dress could be nice, since I don't mind field dressing big game I would do it anyway, but other players could choose otherwise. I would really like to pick up rabbits and bring them home to dress them tho. It would be really interesting to test both things and see which one works better.

[aymeric]

I definitively want to carry some rabbits back to my base and be safe and warm.

For bigger carcasses it might be discussed.

[Pillock]

On 1/24/2017 at 10:14 AM, Kaisentlaia said:

I personally don't mind the risk of freezing while harvesting carcasses, it's true that fires can't be started on ice when it's windy but I seldom do that and if I start freezing I just cancel the action and go warm up somewhere (or take the damage and finish harvesting when it's worth it). The risk of being attacked isn't that high since wildlife goes slow motion during time acceleration, I guess it would get worse while slowly crawling around dragging a heavy, smelly carcass. I reckon that not having a sled or snowmobile is the reason why it's more convenient to field dress and go home with 8-10kg of meat and guts, instead of dragging 45-70kg of deer around, if people don't want to do that with a vehicle irl I bet it would be even more exhausting by foot. Of course, dragging to base would be a big effort but dragging the whole carcass would absolutely make sense for example if it was a few meters away from a fishing hut. In that case making the effort of dragging for a short distance would allow the player to harvest from a much safer position.

Mind I know nothing about hunting, my assumptions are based on what I read/saw and could be wrong.  Of course in game the effort spent and the gain would be different, depending on how the mechanic would be implemented by the devs.

Having the choice to either drag or field dress could be nice, since I don't mind field dressing big game I would do it anyway, but other players could choose otherwise. I would really like to pick up rabbits and bring them home to dress them tho. It would be really interesting to test both things and see which one works better.

I think you have highlighted the problem with this idea. Carrying or moving carcasses to shelter for harvesting would make the game a lot easier - possibly too easy.

Consider that you have an indoor shelter with a bed and a stove - you can satisfy the warmth, rest and hydration requirements from inside this shelter without any risk save for collecting firewood, which is very plentiful anyway. Your only reason to go out into the world and face the cold and the wolves for any length of time is to get food: to get food by looting, you need to travel a lot, and the same is true of getting cattails; in order to hunt, you need to spend extended periods outside finding and stalking your prey, as well as harvesting the carcass, for which you probably need a fire as well; to fish you'll need a lot of fuel to keep the hut warm enough for long enough; to snare rabbits, again you need to be outside and probably burn a fire to stay warm and ward off wolves. All these methods are significantly affected by the weather, and most require a decent amount of fuel as well - if you could just pick up your rabbits and take them indoors, there would be very little exposure to the dangers of the weather and the animals at any point, and your only reason to get out into the world would be because you'd get bored if you didn't.

Therefore, I think there'd need to be big changes to the way hunting and snaring works - in terms of how difficult it is to find and catch your prey - in order to balance the fact that your outdoor time would be significantly decreased by being able to move your carcasses.

[mystifeid]

I tend to spend most of my time traveling from one place to another. After about day 80, I am usually a level 5 archer and killing rabbits becomes very easy. I see a lot of rabbits. As things stand, if I could pick them up as I went, most of my diet would switch to roast rabbit.

If it became possible to carry rabbits I think it would have to become a lot harder to shoot them and probably the yield from snaring would also have to drop substantially.

[cekivi]

8 minutes ago, mystifeid said:

I tend to spend most of my time traveling from one place to another. After about day 80, I am usually a level 5 archer and killing rabbits becomes very easy. I see a lot of rabbits. As things stand, if I could pick them up as I went, most of my diet would switch to roast rabbit.

If it became possible to carry rabbits I think it would have to become a lot harder to shoot them and probably the yield from snaring would also have to drop substantially.

You do realise most people are not skilled enough with a bow to hunt rabbits eh @mystifeid?

And the easy fix for that is make the rabbits white (so snowshoe hares) or greatly reduce the odds of seeing one but make their tracks persistent so you know where to setup your snares. If snaring odds were decreased that'd likely make rabbit hunting so poor that the only way to make it worthwhile is to be able to pick up the carcass

Don't get me wrong, I like rabbit hunting too but the odds of catching one are a little too high at the moment

[mystifeid]

8 minutes ago, cekivi said:

You do realise most people are not skilled enough with a bow to hunt rabbits eh @mystifeid?

At level 5 you can shoot while crouched. It takes no skill to crouch walk close to a rabbit and hit it with an arrow.

8 minutes ago, cekivi said:

And the easy fix for that is make the rabbits white (so snowshoe hares) or greatly reduce the odds of seeing one but make their tracks persistent so you know where to setup your snares. If snaring odds were decreased that'd likely make rabbit hunting so poor that the only way to make it worthwhile is to be able to pick up the carcass

I think you are agreeing with me here. Like I said, it would have to become harder to shoot them.

8 minutes ago, cekivi said:

Don't get me wrong, I like rabbit hunting too but the odds of catching one are a little too high at the moment

And it is ridiculously easy as a level 5 archer. The only reason I don't kill every one I see is because there is little point at the moment.

[cekivi]

Definitely agreeing on the last two points

I have yet to get to level 5 archery as I can't hit anything with the bow (rifles are my friends) so I keep forgetting that you can shoot while crouched at level 5