They’re very skittish and fast, just like real deer. The problem I have is that the deer’s alert range is bigger than the maximum range of majority of ranged weapons so it’s practically impossible of killing them other than just running them over with a car. Is this the main intended method of killing them or are there other viable methods to actually hunt them yourself?
prepare traps, circle wide around them, lure them into said traps
(they generally dont know how to escape a cardboard box with 3 sides)
other than that, get a real long range gun with a scope (or a crossbow, or a bow)
crouch when you’re trying to get closer to em, if they cant see you, they don’t alert and run away.
and if all else fails… just chase it down until it cant run away anymore.
Have you tried hunting at night with infra-red goggles or nightvision perk?
Otherwise, I suppose chasing them on a motorbike with a gun turret might be a bit unsporting.
Problem with that beside the chance of find said longarm, is by the time you have the skill reliably shoot that far, you should have a working car, horse if want to retvrn to cowboy, to run over that buck. And by the time you have the gear and skills, the deer have become zeer. Okay the correct name is “woodland wight”, but it’s just quicker to say zeer.
Which profession even starts with those goggles anyway, if at all? I do know that there is(was) a bionic sinper that had a night vision cbm. So a night vision perk build seems viable to hunt deer. Otherwise if you don’t have it on loadout, you run into the same problem with trying to hunt with a longarm. It’s a lot faster to find/make a working car, and by the time you do a gun/bow to hunt deer with, they become Zeer.
This suggestion seems to be the most viable car-less one, since you don’t have to have a special build for it. The only issue i can think of is how long vertically and horizontally you need the trap to be. I am assuming a simple long L shape of traps will do the job.
long L shape, use buildings in towns to make choke points, heck, use trees to make choke points.
… but yeah the long range weaponry tactic isnt nearly as far fetched as you’d think… i usually raid a town and have a rifle within the first couple days of a cata session, and enough fabrication to make a silencer so as to not spookems the woodland creatures.
hitting smaller animals like rabbits and squirrels tends to be a bit harder, it is a small moving target as opposed to the larger deer ones.
also: downside to hitting your car against deer/other things is the current way car damage is handled… often you’ll be doing more damage to your car than to the thing you’re running over… but if you wanted to be a bit more strategic with it, if you have a motorcycle or scooter (even a bike really) you can fire your weapon from that vehicle without losing control of it, though you lose the option to aim carefully.
and last but not least… animals -do- spawn slowly over time, so I’ll often see woodland critters roaming the cities where zombies live. (or running into the landmines around my base, those little fuckers.)
Unless you have great luck at finding .30-06, .308 guns and ammo, which I rarely do it is pretty far fetched.
Especially since to get into gun shops (besides boarded up ones, which have very little loot) you need one of the following:
- a hacksaw to cut the barred windows
- lockpicks which need a hacksaw or wrench to make them unless you find a locksmith set
- acetylene torch with at least 60 charges to cut the metal doors
You need all three tools to seriously repair cars. If you have a running car you can kill deer. In the majority of my runs I am able to find those tools consistently before finding a really accurate longarm. And when I do the zombie wildlife start spawning. And that’s why hunt bear and moose, or any other animal that wants to kill you, but run over deer.
That said I will try that trap idea.
You can start with nightvision as a trait (unless that changed recently). Or just hunt in the night by the full moon (works with zombies, may not work with deer, have not checked).
you only need improvised lockpicks, which just needs a hammer
but really any gun will do for hunting game, and that includes stuff you’ll regularly find inside pawn shops, the hunting stores, antiques places… all of which are never locked or boarded up.
I have an idea, what if you crouch behind a furniture (cardboard box, display rack or something similar) and push it while moving towards the deer? Or maybe use multiple smoke grenades to make a “corridor” to come closer… But it just thoughts, it might not work in game.
NV trait adds just 2(yes, two. not twenty) tiles to regular NV radius. While an immense help for night raiding before you get NV goggles/mutations/bionics, it would not help as much hunting deer at night.
That may even work with turrets, lol. Solid Snake knew what he doing.
And here I am doing all my hunting with an awl pile and a motorcycle…
huck rocks with a slingshot while riding alongside your game at 30 MPH XD
Naxt leiel 300 IQ techniech only fur treu machenical genieses.
Place a fully automatic 50 caliber turret down and scare the deer towards it. It will terderise the meat for you.
I think you meant “vaporize” 
Yes, overkill will result in no usable remains (although I think I’ve occasionally seen a very small number of cuts of tainted meat from undead that were finished off with a critical, but usually it’s just scraps and possibly some bone).
I usually just run them into a river and bleed them to death. Suppose you could build a wall and that would work too, they only ever try to escape directly away from you as the ai is pretty limited. Any obstruction and they literally stand still to die.