Just Starting

[Pete Gaimari]

To start off let me say i've been hunting for almost 70 years. Yes, i'm an old coot. My chosen weapon is a traditional muzzleloader, open sights, round ball, and black powder. I hunt for elk, black bear, and mule deer. I live in Colorado. My chosen method to hunt is to still hunt. It's sneaking in close to the game. I have no interest in taking long shots or calling. Calling gives my position away and alerts the game. I also don't consider it fair chase hunting. I have no bias on what others do. These are my personal rules. I continue to hunt at 78 years old alone but just for deer and bear now. Too old to get the meat out from an elk.

So, I come to my question now that you know a bit about me. I want to hunt in the game like I do in real life. Is the Classic or COTW game better for me? I want to use the muzzleloader with open sights and round ball. What do I need to do to get to the point that I can do that? What map is closest to Colorado timber. I forgot to mention I always hunt in the timber.

Thanks for any help.

I also posted this on the Classic forum.

[magicISO Sweden]

classic is more real hunting

COTW is really fun to play and if you like muzzleloader there is one in one of the weapons dlc for me i play this more then classic now

[Striker]

I'm using the muzzle loader 50 cal. The mini ball has a longer effective range than the round ball and it's good for use on class 4-8 animals (round ball is for class 3-7). V-e-r-y slow on reload but one hit is usually enough to put a moose or Elk down in a hurry. In COTW you can get the muz and scope right off the bat for free with the DLC that includes it. As you might expect bullet drop on the muz can be quite severe so take it to the rifle range in Hirschfeld. The ranges in the game have free ammo so you don't have to use store bought ammo on the range.

[The Texan Hunter]

I am a lifelong hunter with over 40 years of experience and I love this game. I have the 2019 version. I got into it last year after almost dying with Covid. It took me months to recover and during that time a needed something to give me my outdoors fix; this game really helped me fill this need during that difficult time.

A few weeks ago my 81-year-old father went into sepsis due to a bladder infection and was in ICU for a week. He is an old woodsman that can't stand to be indoors for more than a day, but needs to go through a couple of months of physical therapy to get better. To help him get through this time without going stir crazy, I set him up a man cave in his spare bedroom with an Xbox One and a 60" LED TV, and this game.

He absolutely loves this game and it is really helping him. The only problem is, he has had trouble learning the complex mechanics of the game. I live 150 miles away and it is too far for me to just hop over and show him how to do stuff, so I started making tutorial videos and uploading them to YouTube for him to watch. I decided that if he like this game and needed some help, there might be others who are like him out there that might benefit from these videos as well, so I am launching a brand new YouTube channel for this purpose. I am currently working on thirty instructional walkthrough videos for the Lake Layton region and will hopefully be launching this new channel by the end of this week. Here is the link to the channel.

If you find yourself needing some help, give me a shout and I will make a custom walkthrough for you.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7Fq6WdseeTkO9M-MYdeuiw

[Falcon]

Originally posted by petegaimari:

To start off let me say i've been hunting for almost 70 years. Yes, i'm an old coot. My chosen weapon is a traditional muzzleloader, open sights, round ball, and black powder. I hunt for elk, black bear, and mule deer. I live in Colorado. My chosen method to hunt is to still hunt. It's sneaking in close to the game. I have no interest in taking long shots or calling. Calling gives my position away and alerts the game. I also don't consider it fair chase hunting. I have no bias on what others do. These are my personal rules. I continue to hunt at 78 years old alone but just for deer and bear now. Too old to get the meat out from an elk.

So, I come to my question now that you know a bit about me. I want to hunt in the game like I do in real life. Is the Classic or COTW game better for me? I want to use the muzzleloader with open sights and round ball. What do I need to do to get to the point that I can do that? What map is closest to Colorado timber. I forgot to mention I always hunt in the timber.

Thanks for any help.

I also posted this on the Classic forum.

You'll need to buy the Smoking Barrels DLC to get access to the black powder muzzle loader. It's 'legal' in the game to hunt deer and elk with the round ball ammo, but I think you'll have to use the minie ball ammo to pass integrity check on bears which are considered class 8 animals in game.

The Silver Ridge Peaks map is set in a fictional game reserve in southern Colorado. It has the right terrain and trees, but for some reason the game developers made it some kind of green mid-summer wonderland instead of painting it in proper fall colors. It looks like Colorado, but during July/August instead of the fall/winter hunting season. It has mule deer, elk, and bears, but for some reason they didn't put whitetails there. It is a DLC map, so you have to buy it separately if you want to hunt there. You can try it out for free in multiplayer before you buy to see if it's for you.

If the colors throw you off, I'd suggest hunting at Layton Lakes. Layton is set in Washington state, but the colors are proper fall colors that give me more of a feeling of being out during hunting season. There's alot more water than you'd find most hunting areas in Colorado, but there are plenty deer, elk, bear, and moose to shoot and plenty of wooded mountainsides that resemble parts of Colorado. Layton is included in the base game, so you don't have to buy anything extra to hunt it.

Feel free to ping me if you have other questions or need help. The game also has an official discord chat board where you can get help pretty much any time you need it, post screen shots of trophies and stuff like that.

https://discord.gg/ny9GsWkrzm

[Pete Gaimari]

Thanks for the help guys. I'm starting to figure some of it out. I did buy the Smoking Barrels DLC but it doesn't show up. I think I know why and i'll go check that out. I still haven't decided between Classic and COTW. I'll do both and see which one I like best.

I also looked at Hunting Simulator 2 because one of the maps was Colorado but it got such bad reviews and doesn't have a muzzleloader I wrote it off.

[shit owl]

yeah SRP is basically the rocky mountains

[shit owl]

Originally posted by petegaimari:

Thanks for the help guys. I'm starting to figure some of it out. I did buy the Smoking Barrels DLC but it doesn't show up. I think I know why and i'll go check that out. I still haven't decided between Classic and COTW. I'll do both and see which one I like best.

I also looked at Hunting Simulator 2 because one of the maps was Colorado but it got such bad reviews and doesn't have a muzzleloader I wrote it off.

hunting simulator is more of an arcade game than hunting imo i prefer hunting unlimited 2008 over it

[Pete Gaimari]

Originally posted by ♥♥♥♥ owl:

Originally posted by petegaimari:

Thanks for the help guys. I'm starting to figure some of it out. I did buy the Smoking Barrels DLC but it doesn't show up. I think I know why and i'll go check that out. I still haven't decided between Classic and COTW. I'll do both and see which one I like best.

I also looked at Hunting Simulator 2 because one of the maps was Colorado but it got such bad reviews and doesn't have a muzzleloader I wrote it off.

hunting simulator is more of an arcade game than hunting imo i prefer hunting unlimited 2008 over it

Yes, right off the bat I saw problems. They were hunting the Colorado map when I was watching. No blaze orange and dogs are illegal to hunt big game. Both of those jumped out at me. With that said the Classic has a safety problem with the muzzleloader. Anybody who uses a real muzzleloader knows to never pour the powder from a horn into the barrel. For one thing a glowing ember can ignite the powder and you're holding the horn which would become a bomb. I'm surprised that got by the game maker. I see they didn't do that in the COTW muzzleloader. The second problem with pouring into the bore with the horn is you have no idea how much powder you're putting in. In needs to be poured into a powder measure and than that is poured down the bore. Maybe that was too much animation for them? Anyway, i'm nitpicking but old farts do that.

[hunterPRO1]

For call of the wild: layton lakes or silver ridge peaks sound like the hunting reserves you would want. Layton lakes comes with the base game and has whitetail, blacktail deer, elk, moose, black bear, coyote, and mallard ducks. Oh and jack rabbits.

And the smoking barrels weapon pack for the muzzleloader.



Classic is free to play, the muzzleloader cost $5 or so if you want to have it right away, or you could do enough missions with the free guns (which are a single shot 12ga and a single shot .243) to earn enough to buy the caplock muzzleloader.

I would recommend downloading classic and trying the free 243 and deer hunting on whitehart island to see how you like it.

[Falcon]

Originally posted by petegaimari:

Thanks for the help guys. I'm starting to figure some of it out. I did buy the Smoking Barrels DLC but it doesn't show up. I think I know why and i'll go check that out. I still haven't decided between Classic and COTW. I'll do both and see which one I like best.

I also looked at Hunting Simulator 2 because one of the maps was Colorado but it got such bad reviews and doesn't have a muzzleloader I wrote it off.

If you still can't get access to the DLC weapons, try restarting Steam. Also make sure you don't have Steam set to 'offline' mode. The DLC content needs to download and it won't do that unless you're in online mode.

COTW and Classic are the best hunting simulators I know of. Hunting games are made by people who spend alot more time writing computer code than hunting, so you have to expect some 'gamey' aspects to all of them. They've done a pretty good job though. I've been lucky enough to have spent a ton of time outdoors fishing and hunting all over the rockies most of the last 45 years. I don't get to do it much at all the last couple years due to finances and health problems. No game will ever compare to the real thing, but this scratches the itch well enough sometimes to keep me from climbing the walls.

[Pete Gaimari]

I have the muzzleloader in both games now. Although I can't use the one in COTW. I guess I need to build up some points to use it. I do get to use it in Classic and came close to killing a bear on my first mission. Not quite close enough but it was fun trying.

I do lot's of fly fishing in the summer and of course hunting in the fall. This game will help fill in on the evenings or crappy weather days.

Thanks again guys.

[Falcon]

Originally posted by petegaimari:

I have the muzzleloader in both games now. Although I can't use the one in COTW. I guess I need to build up some points to use it. I do get to use it in Classic and came close to killing a bear on my first mission. Not quite close enough but it was fun trying.

I do lot's of fly fishing in the summer and of course hunting in the fall. This game will help fill in on the evenings or crappy weather days.

Thanks again guys.

As far as I'm aware, you don't need any rifle points to use the muzzle loader in COTW if. You should be able to purchase it 'free' at any claimed outpost or tent and put it into your inventory. Can't recall for sure, but you might need to build up some rifle score points to be able to buy the minie ball ammo or the scope for it. Happy hunting!

[Snail Rancher]

Originally posted by Falcon:

The Silver Ridge Peaks map is set in a fictional game reserve in southern Colorado. It has the right terrain and trees, but for some reason the game developers made it some kind of green mid-summer wonderland instead of painting it in proper fall colors. It looks like Colorado, but during July/August instead of the fall/winter hunting season. It has mule deer, elk, and bears, but for some reason they didn't put whitetails there. It is a DLC map, so you have to buy it separately if you want to hunt there. You can try it out for free in multiplayer before you buy to see if it's for you.

If the colors throw you off, I'd suggest hunting at Layton Lakes. Layton is set in Washington state, but the colors are proper fall colors that give me more of a feeling of being out during hunting season. There's alot more water than you'd find most hunting areas in Colorado, but there are plenty deer, elk, bear, and moose to shoot and plenty of wooded mountainsides that resemble parts of Colorado. Layton is included in the base game, so you don't have to buy anything extra to hunt it.

Yeah, the all the green drives me crazy; even in summer it is not that green. And the pronghorn think they are deer, hanging out in the forests rather than running in the parks. And the mountain goats seem to avoid being on mountains. Oh well!

As for whitetails, although they turn up in river areas in eastern Colorado, they don't live in the mountains, particularly in the San Juans, which is what SRP is based on. (Basically the area around Ouray/Telluride.)

[Snail Rancher]

Originally posted by petegaimari:

I have the muzzleloader in both games now. Although I can't use the one in COTW. I guess I need to build up some points to use it. I do get to use it in Classic and came close to killing a bear on my first mission. Not quite close enough but it was fun trying.

If you bought the Smoking Barrels DLC, you can access the muzzleloader via the in-game "store" for free, though you still have to "buy" it (for no cost); ditto for the scope if you want it. Only the ammo will cost you in-game currency.

[Hidden Gunman]

Welcome aboard. Enjoy your time here and don't be afraid to ask things.