No feathers from hunting birds

[MrMotorhead]

I started a new survivor with 3.70b.  I have been hunting birds with a bow+arrow in order to get feathers to make more arrows.  I have tried this with 5-6 birds, (raven, black grouse, hazel grouse).  However, every kill has been "gristly" and unable to be skinned.  So I butcher the body to receive meat+fat but no feathers.  I would expect to get feathers from the bird, even with a skin damaged beyond using.  I think I should be getting some feathers because I found 8 feathers at the location where another bird's body was eaten by a predator.

Most of the kills were just one arrow and then some punches on an unconscious bird.  It seems odd that the skin wasn't usable at all.

This seems different from the behavior that I remember.

[Tinker]

This seems to match my experiences with earlier versions, it may be a little more extreme than my experience.

It seems that the more you hit, including misses, an animal the more degraded it gets and feathers are only harvested when skinning, if the body is to damaged then you get nothing, though I think you should get some feathers..

It could be the punches do more damage to the skin, I usually use a knife to finish off small animals and birds with a single point attack to the skull and if I need two or three attempts then I can damage the skin. It could also be affected by a low hideworking skill, though I am not sure on that point.

[MrMotorhead]

I don't mind that the skin can't be used, that's fair.  My survivor began in winter and missed out on berry picking; combined with low trapping skill has not been able to trap any birds.  However, I don't think that my survivor could inflict more damage than a fox does when it eats the bird's entire body.  Even when this happens and the bird is completely gobbled up, it leaves behind feathers.

[PALU]

The mechanics are that the skin gets more damaged the more damage there is to the body of the animal. Thus, once you've cornered, caught (in a trap), or rendered the animal unconscious you should aim for the head exclusively, as attacks that hit any other body part (including the neck) is causing damage to the skin.
A large animal can take a fair number of hits to various body parts before the skin gets damaged, while a small animal like an ermine gets the skin damaged by an instantly killing arrow through the neck.

The above is not intended as a defense of the current system where feather retrieval is correlated to skin retrieval, but rather to help understanding of how the current system works.

It can also be noted that there aren't that many uses for feathers, and you'll probably get more than you have any use for rather quickly, but that doesn't help someone who's just started out.