Layton Lakes - Diminishing Population?

[Darlantin]

So recently i've moved back to Layton Lakes to attempt the Great One. Prior to this Whitetail was not a species I focused to much on, had only a handful of zones discovered. I made a push to track drinking zones and now have a total of about 17 with tents and stands placed around them.

I started about 2-3 weeks ago and the populations were very thick when I started. I would circuit through as many need zones as I could in the 1200-1500 time frame as I could (Typically 8-10 zones) and would alternate.

When I had first started the animal composition was amazing. A few 8+ herds with 4 bucks, a couple doe only herds, then mostly 4-6 packs with 2 bucks in them, and maybe 3 zones would be empty, but the next day there would be something there. I was consistently dropping 2 bucks on every zone, and I would do this cycle multiple time a night. (I'm guessing i've killed 150-250 whitetail bucks since i've start. Only 1 diamond FYI)

So the past few nights it has turned into a ghost town. I'd say 5 of the zones, i'm not seeing any animals in anymore. The same handful of doe only herds are still around, etc. And a few of the zones i will still spot mixed packs, but its really only in about 4-5 of the zones if i'm lucky, 2 if i'm not.

At first I thought maybe I was killing to fast for the respawn as I assumed it took longer, but I believe when you kill an animal it respawns the next time you rest or restart the game, just in a different herd. I believe that is why I consistently saw so many animals. I've done laps around pretty much all the lakes looking for tracks and cant find anything.

Anyone have any thoughts? I'm wondering if there isent a few huge herds that these animals are spawning into and i'm just missing them? Or had a similar experience?

[Hanuman]

If you kill 4+ animals of a herd the need zone can disappear.

[ÐåŕķMệşşịäħ]

Originally posted by Darlantin:

Layton Lakes - Diminishing Population?

There's a known bug where the animals do not respawn and it hasn't been fixed for years.

That's most likely what you have and it's not only limited to the "Layton Lakes" map it can happen to all of them. That's what happened to my maps as well as several friends of mine that I played this with. So it's a common issue. Eventually your maps will start to feel lifeless.

The only fix is to manually reset the animal population because the developers are too stupid to fix it themselves.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8R6xPsF_Ozk

Also, I heard that tents and blinds despawn all animals within a certain radius around them. So you putting up 17 tents is probably another reason why no animals are spawning. This game is just extremely buggy/broken.

[Mr L]

Need zones move to. I've had several real good areas that just vanished. I'm sure they're somewhere else I haven't found them yet

[yato 6.5]

only way i found to make it better was to do multi play and get 4 or 5 players in that helped a bit

[The*Broken*Clock]

I can confirm tents don't despawn animals. Traveled to one of my tents today in PF and a mule deer was doing the wary buck routine just outside the entrance. Didn't run until i started walking though...
I regularly set up 12 to 15 tents per map, about 150 yards from need zones; just completed the PF trophy collection 15 minutes ago so there's no issue with animald spawning in that regard.
When hunting animals heavily looking for diamonds I would go through periods where there would be several days, like 5 to 6, of low population before it bounced back, and it didn't matter if I closed and reopened the game. Maybe they spawn back differently than we thought? Or maybe this bug doesn't affect everone? Layton lakes is the map I hunted most heavily and I still have a good population there after over 1000 hours of play. Hope they respawn soon for you and it's not some crappy bug!

[gabcik&kubis]

Tents and stands seem to despawn animals when you build them. At least stands. I tried to get better shot at group of animals thus I erected tripod stand. I climbed up and the area was totally lifeless. After some time they came back but that moment it was emptied and there was no mass fleeing of the animals - they just disappeared
I have ground blind and tent maybe 50 meters from the feed zone and herd of springbok comes every day

[McSqurl Nugget]

tents/stands/etc don't despawn animals. they scare them away when built. if they despawned them the trick to drop a tent and roll back time to get that big diamond at the lake you just saw wouldn't work. and that works well, i've done it hundreds of times, but my luck has never held that the animal was a diamond. i should post a bug thread for my bad luck, it'd be as viable as most :-)

never heard of nor seen a respawning bug in the 2.5+ years and 4k+ hours i've played. animals don't respawn until you start a new game session, any dead animals, harvested or not, are respawned and any wounded animals are healed.

[Magnificon]

I have seen threads talking about a 3-6 day respawn delay