Tracks that just stop

[KaiEr]

Please be aware that I'm going on 1,900 hours, so I'm well aware of all of the normal mistakes people make when they talk about tracks disappearing - this isn't that.

More and more I'm finding trails that immediately stop. But if I leave the area and return, suddenly there will be tracks leading off from that spot. This has happened with several types of animals, but I've been hunting rabbits lately, so I'm seeing more of it with them. Let me give an example:

I found tracks for a group of rabbits, so I found a male track and followed the groups tracks while having the male's tracks highlighted (my selected tracks are red). They went to a very open area (the tracks were either old or fresh, so they were not so far away). Suddenly the tracks for the entire group ended. They didn't continue in the same direction, they didn't go in a different direction, and they didn't backtrack. (And the rabbits were not there.) I selected all of the tracks and checked to see if any of them continued, but I could not find any. I went out about a hundred yards, circled my way back in, and never saw any more rabbit tracks, let alone tracks from the group I was following.

I then went off a bit further, took a coyote, and headed back to where the trail had ended. As soon as I got back to where they had stopped, there were tracks leading off in another direction.

It's almost like the game looses track of the trail, only to "refresh" it when I move away and come back in.

[Monke]

I've just had it, again, today, too. Casting circles around (too many times for fun) just allowed me to see all the tracks up to the the point he vanished. I even followed his ingress route back in case there were "backwards" tracks. Nothing. An unsatisfying experience.
I suspect I will have a "0" consecutive harvest bonus, too, if I logged back in, too. Such a shame.

[KaiEr]

Originally posted by Scythe:

I've just had it, again, today, too. Casting circles around (too many times for fun) just allowed me to see all the tracks up to the the point he vanished. I even followed his ingress route back in case there were "backwards" tracks. Nothing. An unsatisfying experience.
I suspect I will have a "0" consecutive harvest bonus, too, if I logged back in, too. Such a shame.

Oh, these were not even wounded animals - this was just tracking.

But I will tell you, if you exit before you see the hunting pressure show up (showing it died), it doesn't mess with your consecutive harvests.

[AtomiK]

This seems to still be an issue, I'm experiencing it right now. Follow tracks, tracks stop, fast travel somewhere, come back tracks continue. Right now I have two female deer running up and down in front of and around me and they're not leaving any tracks... Hmmm....

[The Truth Will Set You Free]

I had the same today. I shot 2 white-tailed deer, one of them I found dead about 100 yards away, the 2nd, also shot (but not into organs, unfortunately) left about 1 mile of blood track with droppings and tracks, which abruptly ended with a pile of droppings, right at the shore of a lake. Did the deer just swim away? :D

[Evil Hagrid]

Something possibly related happened to me, I was on a tree-stand and after a while a bunch of whitetail tracks showed up, as if the tracks were hidden on the area before.

[The Truth Will Set You Free]

Originally posted by Vrs-:

Something possibly related happened to me, I was on a tree-stand and after a while a bunch of whitetail tracks showed up, as if the tracks were hidden on the area before.

I really hope the devs look at the few bugs because this masterpiece of a game is worth it unlike any other.

[The Truth Will Set You Free]

Originally posted by The Truth Will Set You Free:

I had the same today. I shot 2 white-tailed deer, one of them I found dead about 100 yards away, the 2nd, also shot (but not into organs, unfortunately) left about 1 mile of blood track with droppings and tracks, which abruptly ended with a pile of droppings, right at the shore of a lake. Did the deer just swim away? :D

OK so I played on Parque Fernando today and shot a red deer. I was sure it would die cuz I shot it in the neck, twice. I followed the blood trails and found them ending at the shore again. This time, however, the body just kept floating and moving around the shore with the wind.

This means that this first time it happened to me might not have been a glitch, either. The body really might have been washed away to another part of the shore.

[Wolfera]

The other day on multiplayer I saw a whole herd of water buffalos, there was a 9 with them, so I went there to find the tracks. I couldnt find a single water buffalo track in the area I spotted them, so I decided to remain on the spot a little while in case they come back.

They did come back, but still no track from them, I was with the bow, couldnt take a good shot at that 9 before spooking the herd and getting aggro from a couple. Went to check the location the 9 was at, no tracks... Waited for 1 IRL hour at that spot and they never came back...

[SantiJames]

Ok so I know this is an old thread but I just had that happen to me, got within 25 meters of a hard level fox, took a shot at it with my compound bow and the shot just veered to the left and scared the fox away. I started to track it for about half an hour and the last track it left was dropplings, and after that it was like the Fox had just flown away. The dropplings was in a small clearing with rocks surrounding it.

[SantiJames]

Alright so good news, I found the fox and it hit him from 25 meters right in the lung, got a Gold for it too. It took me a while, I waited for like half an hour watching if he would go back to where he was originally, and then I decided to re trace his tracks to see if any new ones appeared, which they didn't. When I walked up to the droppings again, I heard a Fox's mating call, coming from the direction where I first spotted and failed to hit him. I sneaked up, couldn't see him as it was night, hid in a tree, and waited. I decided to use the jack rabbit distress call to lure it, and it just so happened to walk up around 25 meters away. God I have not actually tracked anything this hard in this game for a while lol.

[GamingB4UWereBorn]

It’s happened to me many times when tracking a animal I shot. Tracks stop so I go back to the hit zone and they magically appear. Very annoying

[OndeTv]

So, it is now 2023 and this still happens.

I spotted a beautiful red deer buck and his herd across a lake some 150m away and took a shot. Sadly, the shot wasn't great, so i had to start tracking hoping to find him downed from bloodloss. He stopped bleeding at 25-50% health, but i kept tracking.

After a while, the tracks just stopped completely:
https://imgur.com/LzHWP2g

Reading this and many other posts i placed a waypoint at the last track i could find, and then teleported to the nearest outpost. Then i started hiking the 1.6km back towards the last track, hoping they would "un-bug".

On the way there, i spotted droppings from him. I then decided to backtrack from there to see where i missed tracks if any:
https://imgur.com/FZh9KSL

As you can see, where i am standing pointing towards the original last track, there is a 247m area where tracks are simply just missing (and i went over the area a LOT):
https://imgur.com/CwoZqCV

Also, when i started investigation this and making this post, i also noticed the original tracks from the drinking zone where i shot at him have gone missing:
https://imgur.com/MvFvsKX

So yeah. It seems this issue is still very much alive, and shame on you devs for not fixing it!

[OndeTv]

I went on and followed the new set of tracks i found. What i discovered i'd also call pretty strange:
The tracks end up going back towards the original spot. And not just a somewhat similar path. No, the exact same tracks i had already examined. From this i guess i can only conclude that the animals path was calculated before i even shot at it, and it is just following or fleeing along this path without deviations regardless of player actions. At least that is what it looks like to me.

Also, notice that even more of the original tracks have gone missing, which makes me conclude that there can only be so many active track icons at once on the map screen:
https://imgur.com/NQkjalx

[OndeTv]

Final update on this particular incident:
I took the time to run the path backwards and forwards a few more times. No new tracks appeared except a few i had missed or skipped in between obvious ones. All droppings were listed as very old, meaning no tracks had been updated either since the original examinations.

This leads me to believe that the animal was simply despawned after going "full circle". A kind of "you lose" mechanic i guess, which if i am correct is very much against.

I also went back to the original shot site, and the tracks that should have been from there and connecting the "circle" were no longer there.

Lastly, i also noticed that sometimes, the huntermate and/or map would show different things until i examined the next track in line. It really does feel like sloppy and buggy coding to me, and i suspect that it is very similar or perhaps even identical to the ones they used in the hunter classic, as i have experienced similar things there.

Again, if i am correct: Shame on you Expansive Worlds!

Edit: Final track image - https://imgur.com/5N8Ec7s