Killing Livestock

[kage74]

Is there any way to kill livestock (cows, pigs, sheep, goats) for their hides without losing honor or upsetting the locals?

[kamikazi21358]

I don’t think there is a way to do it without loosing honor. It is inherently a parasitic practice to be killing people’s farm animals thus you will always lose honor for it. (Unless there is such animals not attached to any owner? But I cannot recall any place on the map that is like that).
You don’t need many domesticated animal hides however for things, so you shouldn’t lose too much honor if you only kill what you need.

As for not upsetting the locals, they will be upset but you can just either do it stealth or target small farms and hogtie the owner or something.
Like Emerald Ranch for example, you can literally put on a mask and go there as night begins, and slaughter ALL of their sheep and goats on the west side of the ranch and there legitimately is a decent chance you might get away with it completely if you leave before dawn. And even if you do get caught, if you have your mask on, they won’t know who it is and only the Law will identify you through the mask, so you can just finish skinning whatever your last kill is and ride away and you’ll be completely immune to retribution if the law arrives only after you have left.
Downes Ranch is another decent place to get a couple goats and ox from on the west side of the ranch, if you keep track of where the owner is.
Grangers’ ranch is a good place for a couple pigs and chickens/rooster if you hogtie the owner (or just shoot them if you’re low honor but since you’re concerned about that I assume not).
For goats, the hill farm thing in the heartlands does good too, just always hogtie the owner and don’t shoot him infront of the dog or the dog will become hostile and killing dogs is bad for honor too.

There might be some more places but most that come to mind will get you into a gunfight, which killing ranchers looses honor more than killing animals I believe. I think, unless there is an exception I don’t know of, killing farm animals will always bring some dishonor, but you can get away with legal retribution in many cases. Like in my current game, I have like more than 50+ perfect sheep skins turned into the trapper just because, mostly from sheepocide-ing Emerald Ranch and almost always getting away with it (just leave when you get caught and make sure your mask is on).