Having a hard time finding animals.

[adsffm]

Not sure if posting in the right category, correct me if not.

I'm fairly new to this game, but I believe I have grasped the basics, although having trouble finding animals to hunt. It's not hard for me to chase them down or to kill them, but I end up wasting more food trying to find animals than I get. I can't seem to find anything bigger than a badger  What I do is walk around in the wilderness map hoping to encounter something because it seems like trying to track anything is a waste of time.

Can you guys give me some basic hints? How do you personally find animals in your save? And are they supposed to be so hard to find or am I doing something wrong?

Any help will be appreciated, thanks.

[Privateer]

Animals can be scarce or abundant and anything in between.

To "find/spot" animals I will often use mountains and marsh/mire high spots to view large areas. Though chasing and catching is not my preferred method.

 More often I use passive hunting through traps/fence and deadfalls in areas where I've noted game passing or having passed.

[adsffm]

Animals can be scarce or abundant and anything in between.

To "find/spot" animals I will often use mountains and marsh/mire high spots to view large areas. Though chasing and catching is not my preferred method.

 More often I use passive hunting through traps/fence and deadfalls in areas where I've noted game passing or having passed.

Oh, so different areas have different population of animals? Thanks for the advice.

[PALU]

I'd rather placed this game play question in the game play questions sub forum...

Passive hunting is the most efficient way to hunt, in my experience. It takes some work to set up, but once done you get time over for other things.
I only (occasionally) hunt big game actively (this does not count removing pests from my farm plots or my homestead) when my traps have been dry for an extended period of time, and "big" in my view is elk, reindeer and wild boar (bears are large, but they're also dangerous, so I avoid those. Wild boars can be dangerous as well).
When hunting large animals I typically look for a places with a good view, like hills, or open terrain like mires to see if I can see any in the distance. Otherwise I walk around zooming into each tile to look for animals or tracks (zoom in, look forward, turn 180 degrees, look, zoom out, turn 180 degrees, move one time, repeat). Any reasonably fresh tracks from large game can then be followed (assuming reasonable tracking skill), although I give up if the area is riddled with tracks crossing back and forth.
Also, I try to avoid spruce infested terrain as the visibility there is poor, but when I track animals passing through such terrain, well, I follow, but I won't look for new game there.

In short, about the same techniques as Privateer uses.

Animal abundance varies over time, but different animals have an affinity for different kinds of terrain as well.

[Dungeon Smash]

Personally, I prefer the thrill of active hunting

you need good perception attributes in order to find the wildlife in their natural habitat.  I find good eyesight to be the most important, as it allows you to see a long way on the map, spot animals moving through the wilderness, and also helps with missile weapons.  it also really helps to have decent tracking skill - if you don't feel like investing in this skill at character creation, you can do the beginner adventure path to get a big boost. 

as others mentioned, your best bet is to find a good vantage point.  Hills and mountains work the best, marshes are also pretty good, and rivers and lakes can work too.  Simply scout around and look for animals. If you see some, make a note of their last-seen location and head  there.  They may have moved or disappeared by the time you get there, so this is where your tracking skill comes in handy.  use it on the world map by pressing ctrl-t, and it will often give you an indication of where the animal headed.  When you think you're getting close, you can try zooming in to follow their tracks more closely.

Of course, there may simply not be any animals where you are.  If that's the case, you can wait around for a while and more animals will likely eventually migrate there.  However, this option takes a long time and isn't viable if you rely on hunting for sustenance.  Your best bet is to stay on the move.  You're far more likely to find animals if you travel, always on the lookout for good vantage points to scout for game.  You also have to keep in mind the habitats of the animals - you aren't likely to find much in the frozen northern mountains during the winter.  Game is most plentiful in the south-east region of the world, near the Kaumo and Reemi - but you must also watch out for the dreaded Njerpez in that region. 

Good luck, young hunter!  Do not forget to thank the forest spirits when you harvest the animals

[DfDevadander]

I prefer active hunting as well, since any lack of game I find can easily be made up for by fishing 

My strategy is to set up a chain of hunting camps on hills and mountains throughout my region, with an effort to keep them all within half a day's walk of one another if the terrain allows for it. I spend my day from the later part of Small Hours to Noon in one area, and if I haven't spotted anything by then, I move to the next closest camp and start again the next morning. This takes me, on average, one to three days before I will spot something good.

For trapping, I've personally had the most success around water sources that are larger than 1 tile on the wilderness (overland) map. Find the water source, observe it for a bit to see if anything goes near it on the wilderness map, and set up a trap line along the most frequently traveled areas. For rivers, I would stick mostly to fording areas and leave the rapids for your fishing nets

[shorun]

Not sure if posting in the right category, correct me if not.

I'm fairly new to this game, but I believe I have grasped the basics, although having trouble finding animals to hunt. It's not hard for me to chase them down or to kill them, but I end up wasting more food trying to find animals than I get. I can't seem to find anything bigger than a badger  What I do is walk around in the wilderness map hoping to encounter something because it seems like trying to track anything is a waste of time.

Can you guys give me some basic hints? How do you personally find animals in your save? And are they supposed to be so hard to find or am I doing something wrong?

Any help will be appreciated, thanks.

it can take a long time to find a good meal, eyesight and tracking are very important to find them. you may need to set up a few camps to extend your hunting range, a place to sleep so you can cover more ground if your home has nothing. and tracking is VERY usefull, animals will flee, especially big ones can run rather fast. but you can do more distance over time so you can tire them, to do that tracking so you dont lose them is essential. if you can't track you should not rely on active hunting to much.

the place you are staying also has an impact on what animals you will encounter, currently i'm up north (by the coast, in the middle) and there's lots of reindeer there, stags, elk, seals, bears, wolves, a few birds, hares, polecats and both type of foxes. the reindeer in such abundance i dont even hunt all that i find. i just walk around from highspot to highspot and see them in the distance, if i need food i'll go the where i've seen them and look for tracks. this works better in winter when everything leaves tracks.

also you don't need to hunt to survive. fishing (especially with nets) and farming/foraging are perfectly viable. combining is best for a full RP playtough, as you would in real life. usually those are my goals, finding the right plants/berries and sometimes encountering animals to hunt along the way, fishing with nets if the land yields to little to survive (wich doesn't really happen). that's when i'm not tending my field for those turnips i use to feed baldrick. (actually i mostly farm plants that can't be found up north, to reduce trips to those decadent southerners.)

on another note, if you switch to fishing, know that everything freezes. even the sea, all except for rapids. if you rely on fishing, live near rapids. should you chose to farm, know that wild animals will come to eat your turnips, traps are your friend. i walled my homestead to keep walking things out (an actual wall, not fence) and use loop traps to catch birds that would dare to eat baldricks turnips.

[PALU]

No, the sea doesn't freeze everywhere. If you go sufficiently far out (and sometimes just along the coast) the sea doesn't freeze, so when the ice is thick enough you can actually walk out to the edge and fish from the edge of the ice, without having to make a hole in the ice.