Duck caller???

[Gman]

I have been wanting to try & hunt ducks for awhile and decided to finally hunt them but i do not see any duck callers in the game to buy? I do own the duck/geese dlc but still do not see any callers for ducks but it does have the callers for geece. Am i missing something here???

[Striker]

Yep. There's a mallard caller No caller for Harly ducks in the Yukon. Try running the local file integrity verification program before you log into the game. I always do and have very few of the problems (crashes, vanishing kills, blood trails that suddenly end etc...) others have been reporting.

[DMC101]

I've found callers worthless. The ducks land or don't regardless of your calling, and once you get a flight or two, it's basically over until you fast travel to the next tent located near a feeding spot. It's not duck hunting at all, it's pond jumping.

[CaptainNebulous]

I've also concluded that because of the way the duck behavior is currently designed, the caller is nearly useless. They should just redesign the ducks to act a lot like the geese do, at least from an AI standpoint.

When the ducks first came out (after the horde-o-duck issue was solved) 5 to 10 minutes of periodic wailing on the duck caller would earn you at least a small flock or two. If you were patient you could build it up to 20 ducks sometimes more. Now, for whatever reason, the duck caller seems to do absolutely nothing in most scenarios.

[McSqurl Nugget]

agree with both above, and that's the reason i don't do the birds, it's not hunting.

[DMC101]

I mean they are ducks for Christ's sake. Just put a ton of flights happening if someone happens to be set up for them. I get it that they would load down the game if they are constantly spawning but people bird hunt for action, you don't stalk ducks. Spotting a feed zone for ducks is about the stupidest thing I've ever seen in a video game.

[Geronimo]

the problem has persisted for some time now and doesnt seem to be one the Devs are willing to tackle yet, they only have so many hands i guess.

I think the issue has something to do with the fact that bird flocks are not programmed to fly around as much as they should be to correlate with hunting opportunities.

For example, with geese, what i see happening is that when a flock lands, being land-based, they will begin to start walking on their flight path from that way-point, and will continue walking until they are spooked into flight once again.

I followed a walking flock one day to see how far they would go if i didnt spook them. After an hour or so of just walking and honking, over a mile later, I just gave up on them.

Those birds were obviously no longer in the game as far as flocks available to call into a decoy set. Most of their time on the map has been spent walking around in the deep woods. I dont know if the geese respawn when beyond the 500 meter player field range like other animals do or not.

If not,at some point, walking from one waypoint to the next, they would reach the edge of the map, or that 500 player field of view, and should respawn in and out like we sometimes see from a distance, but i have not been in any position on the map to actually witness this.

A Dev programmer would be able to deciphere this for us.

Regardless, it seems to me after hours of trying to figure out the waterfowling in CoTW that birds are not properly programmed to fly around on flight paths, and are breaking from their pathways to become grounded either on land as with geese or in the middle of a lake as with ducks. The geese have the option to walk to the next waypoint, but the ducks dont so they just stay trapped at one location.

They either start walking through the woods, if geese, or stay sitting on their water spot, if ducks, until they are spooked. And because they are not flying around their pathways, and staying in one spot, they are not becoming available for decoy hunting in various places around the map.

And once spooked they simply fly off to begin their pathway once again, but at the next waypoint just go into that mode of staying until spooked.

There is some problem with the programming AI related to pathways versus spooking that is creating the problems which we confront as hunters.

I think the devs need to take a look at the programming for Hunter Classic in this regard and find out whats going on. Its probably a simple fix.

This may also be complicated by the other dynamic of the birds needing to have zones unlocked which then become part of their redesignated pathways.

In CoTW every animal has a natural programmed pathway-flightpath, and every herd or flock has a lead animal which follows that pathway. However that natural pathway is re-written and altered according to what zones a hunter unlocks and attaches that particular animal, herd or flock to. After which that becomes the new pathway. to be followed as their new routine.

This is why you see what appears to be an increase in numbers around those new unlocked zones.

But, with birds which are glitching to one landing spot because they cant walk to the next zone, or walking from zone to zone, programming must be readdressed specifically for that issue.