Guide - How to find whitetails at Layton (long read)

[Falcon]

I am tired of typing this over and over, so I'm hoping maybe a moderator will pin it.

Drink Zone 101.

There are whitetail drink zones all over the place. It's easier to start with where you won't find them. I haven't seen a single whitetail on the coastline or river bank on the far right side of the map. Not saying there can't be any there, but I haven't seen any. I haven't seen any on the lakes in the northern 1/5th of the map, although I'm a little less than 100% certain that none exist there at least for some people. I've heard of people finding them at the crater lake on Mt Leviathan, but I haven't seen any there. There are usually whitetails literally everywhere else that has water. They are very spread out, so you need tents and some planning to bag more than a handful or two during one drink period.

Some people will deliberately delete zones that are too far off their regular route. I personally don't think that works very well. A new drink zone will usually populate close to the one you just deleted, and you'll have to devote more scouting time to find it.

Opinions vary a bit, but most people who've put in the hours to have an informed opinion consider shooting does to be pointless if you're just after trophy animals. They're usually just replaced by other does. I'd only start shooting them if your herds get segregated to the point where you start getting herds with 4 or more bucks. In that case, you can shoot a couple does out of a doe-only zone and shoot a couple bucks out of a zone with too many. Sometimes one of them will shuffle locations when they respawn. The overall male/female ratio seems to stay balanced though. If you've moved a doe out of that zone to make room for a buck, the doe will pop up somewhere else, and often somewhere you don't want one. Sometimes a doe will respawn into a zone that had only a single buck before, turning it into a doe-only zone so you're back to square one. It's like playing whack-a-mole. Trying to 'manage' something that's almost entirely RNG is a massive waste of time in my humble opinion.

It can take 3-7 days for animals to respawn into a zone, so make sure to rotate zones frequently and rest them long enough to repopulate. Don't overhunt your zones. Even if you don't actually generate enough pressure to delete them, having constant daily hunting pressure in an area can cause animals to relocate. The zone might still show up on the map, but sometimes the animals will either start using a different spot in that zone or move to another area altogether. An abandoned or deleted zone means you'll have to spend additional time figuring out where they went.

Where/how to actually look for WT drink zones?

Draw an imaginary horizontal line across the map about 4/5ths of the way to the top. ALL lakes to the south of that (except maybe the crater lake on Mt Leviathan) usually have at least one small band of WT.

The WT on the smaller lakes are usually easiest to find, so you probably want to start there. Most of the WT on the little lakes drink within 25m of the water. The lakes themselves are small enough you can usually scout the entire shoreline in under a minute. Approach the lake from the downwind side during drink time. Start crouch walking once you're within 125-150m of the shore line. If you haven't spotted drinking animals by the time you're in a position to see the entire shore, move a few yards right or left and look again to see if they're behind trees. As a last resort you can walk all the way around the lake a few yards back from the shoreline. Even if you spook them, you can still find the empty drink zone or tracks that will lead you to it. The smaller lakes never have more than 1 WT drink spot in my experience. Once you've found it, you can stop looking. On my last playthrough, Mushroom Lake had a really nice WT herd. Over a dozen WT total, and usually 4-5 bucks. Ignore the small lakes at your own peril.

The 4-5 biggest lakes usually have at least 2 whitetail drink zones on them. Some of them are visible from the shoreline, but some aren't. Some of them are tucked a few yards back from the water behind the first treeline. Some of them are set back from the main lakes on small sloughs/ponds. They can be 50-100m away from the lake in places that don't even look like they'd actually have water. Start by walking either the east or west shoreline during drink time from south to north. Keep an eye out ahead of you as well as taking frequent looks all the way across the lake. Due to the render distance for ground cover sometimes animals are easier to spot 350m across a lake than they are 50m from you on the near shore. Repeat this on the opposite side of the lake next time. Do this a few more times, but walk parallel to the shoreline a certain distance back from it. Maybe 30m from the shoreline at first, and then 60, and then 90. Once you've found 2-3 WT drink zones on a particular lake you can probably stop. I've never found more than 3 WT drink zones even on the biggest lakes. Most of my WT drink zones on the big lakes are on the eastern or northern sides. Not sure if that's normal or not, but that might be a good place to start your search.

You can find WT drink zones nearly the entire north-south length of the central river including both branches above the confluence. They're the hardest to find, but the easiest ones to hunt efficiently once you've found them. They tend to be fairly evenly spaced out along the river, and finding ones within 150m of each other is unusual. I've found some right on the river, but not many. More often, they're in places where you'll never see the deer if you're just walking the banks of the main channel. They're most common near places where there are trail crossings, railroad bridges, or sandbars where the animals can cross. Start using the same south-to-north search as on the big lakes, but continue repeating until you've walked parallel lines at 30m intervals all the way out to at least 150m away from the river bank on both sides. You should be carefully glassing in all directions the entire time. Some of the "river" drink zones are 50 ft up the sides of the surrounding hills. Don't be afraid to investigate tracks or vocalizations. Drop a waypoint marker at your current location so you can come back and resume your normal search after.

The huge lake that spans the entire southern end of the map usually has at least a couple WT drink zones. Usual rules still apply. They can be anywhere from right on the shoreline all the way out to 100m or even farther away. The more systematic and organized you are, the quicker you'll find them.

When's the best time to look for them?

When you're trying to find drink zones, it doesn't pay at all to show up early. Don't even start walking/glassing until you're at least an hour into the drink period. Remember, you're not hunting for animals yet. You're just scouting so you can hunt them later. You can locate quite a few drink zones by following whitetail tracks, but the zones won't show unless the WT have already been there drinking. WT have two daytime drink periods. The main one is 12-3 pm, but there's a second early drink time from 5-7 am. Only a small percentage of WT (maybe 10-25%) use the early drink time so most people don't bother with it. Your call.

Remember always that a drink zone can have more than one species using it, and more than one time slot. Just because there are blacktails or moose or rabbits drinking there at a certain time doesn't mean WT don't use it in the afternoon. If you're serious about grinding a great one, it might be a good idea to print out a hard copy, or make a good electronic copy of your Layton map that you can mark up to keep track of which drink zones actually have WT and where you've already looked. I realize that's a huge PITA for a video game, and wish the devs gave us the option to mark up our maps in game or at least made the drink zone icons list ALL species/times discovered there.

Start looking about an hour after drink time starts, and keep looking for at least an hour after it ends. The animals might be gone, but the tracks and need zones will still be there. In fact, it's not a bad idea to look from about 1 pm til at least 5 pm. Quite a few herds feed within 150m of the river/lake where they drink, and their eating time is like 3-5 pm (3-7 maybe? i forget). You might find drink zones that were used recently. You will also find feed zones that you can use to extend the hours you can hunt WT during a given day and help spread your hunting pressure out a little.

How many WT drink zones are there total?

No idea. Rough guess? If you double count the ones that might be getting used at more than one time of day maybe 3 dozen. Seems like a nice reasonable round number. Maybe more. Maybe less. I doubt anyone has found every WT drink zone/time on their map. A couple dozen is more than enough to keep you knee deep in WT bucks. Set aside at least every 3rd WT drink period for scouting and you'll get there eventually.

Some helpful hints.

Avoid the urge to run or drive everywhere. Walk or fast crouch walk when you're looking for zones. One rev of an ATV engine or a couple careless steps and the deer will be long gone before you ever spot them. If you use a backpack, ditch it. They're noisemakers. 20 lbs is enough for a decent WT loadout even if you're packing a tent or tripod. If you pare it down to one rifle, you can probably lug a tent AND a tripod and still come in under 20 lbs.

Shooting your gun will spook everything within 350m now, so it might be a good idea to plan on not shooting it at all while you're actively scouting for zones. That herd of WT will be in the same spot once you're ready to actually start hunting. Unless you spot a potential diamond or great one in there, you're better off not shooting at all on scouting missions. You don't want to shoot them and spook off the other herd you might have spotted if you hadn't gotten impatient. Shoot some other species that day outside WT drink times if you're hard up for cash.

Remember to set any tent at least 150m back from your drink zones. If you're using a tripod and want to take shorter shot set it up ahead of time. The noise from erecting a tripod can also spook animals from about 150m away. You might want to add an extra 50m to that distance if your tent or tripod is upwind of one of the drink zones you'll be hunting.

Scouting gets kind of boring after awhile. Shooting stuff is way more fun. Take the time to do it right when you're scouting so you don't have to do it more than necessary.

Won't that take forever?

The people you see bagging 2 dozen or more bucks every drink time have spent hundreds of hours locating need zones and finding good tent/tripod locations. Don't be surprised if you can't replicate their success after 40 hours or even 100. Just not gonna happen. The Layton map is 4 years old, and they've had plenty of time to get everything sorted out. Some of them have posted color coded maps on reddit or pinterest if you want a crib sheet. There's even one pinned in this discussion board. Exact locations tend to vary some from player to player, so you'll still have to put in the legwork to pinpoint the zones on your map.

[Mom_Kat]

I used to have lots of whitetail does, until I started shooting does. Now I have Whitetail bucks. You have to shoot does if you want more bucks, regardless of what map or what species. I never saw a male roe deer at Cuatro Colinas until I shot a bunch of females.

Layton Lakeshore is a hotspot for whitetail. There's a herd or two straight up from there in Balmont/Roonechee and another in the flats east of the Kraken Rope Bridge.

It's mostly about taking your time. You can't go running around / fast traveling into areas and expect to find good bucks of any kind. Hunting requires stealth and patience. Once you shoot a gun, you're going to have to wait for them to settle down. Generally speaking, the higher level the bucks, the more skittish they are.

[Falcon]

Originally posted by Mom_Kat:

I used to have lots of whitetail does, until I started shooting does. Now I have Whitetail bucks. You have to shoot does if you want more bucks, regardless of what map or what species. I never saw a male roe deer at Cuatro Colinas until I shot a bunch of females.

Layton Lakeshore is a hotspot for whitetail. There's a herd or two straight up from there in Balmont/Roonechee and another in the flats east of the Kraken Rope Bridge.

It's mostly about taking your time. You can't go running around / fast traveling into areas and expect to find good bucks of any kind. Hunting requires stealth and patience. Once you shoot a gun, you're going to have to wait for them to settle down. Generally speaking, the higher level the bucks, the more skittish they are.

The doe/buck ratio on the map doesn't change regardless of how many does you shoot. Shooting does in one location can cause them to respawn in a different location, but you'll never get rid of them. This has been verified by people using 3rd party population scanners.

Good advice otherwise though. Higher level animals do spook from farther away and stay spooked longer. Diamonds spook easier than other animals of the same level even. The ones that don't travel solo also have an annoying habit of burying themselves in the middle of a herd at need zones so you can't get a good shot on them until they're moving between zones.

[Fuzzatron]

So you're saying you want animals to appear predictably in spots that you can just google and spend 5-10 mins on a hunt? This isn't your game. The spawns change, the need zones change, animals move unpredictably at times.

Just play the game and hunt what you find, sometimes you might find a lot of the animal you intend to, sometimes you won't.

[Falcon]

Originally posted by Fuzzatron:

So you're saying you want animals to appear predictably in spots that you can just google and spend 5-10 mins on a hunt? This isn't your game. The spawns change, the need zones change, animals move unpredictably at times.

Just play the game and hunt what you find, sometimes you might find a lot of the animal you intend to, sometimes you won't.

Mmm. No. Maybe work on your reading comprehension?

I usually get plenty of whatever I'm after on Layton, because I've spent hundreds of hours exploring that map and know when/where to find them. This guide is intended for beginners who might be having trouble finding whitetails at all and don't know where to start looking, or intermediate players who are trying to find more zones because they're grinding for diamonds or a great one. We get at least a few people asking specifically about whitetails every week. Instead of having to type the same answers over and over, I've written this guide for them.

If that's not you, then you're in the wrong discussion thread.

[Mom_Kat]

Originally posted by Falcon:

The doe/buck ratio on the map doesn't change regardless of how many does you shoot. Shooting does in one location can cause them to respawn in a different location, but you'll never get rid of them. This has been verified by people using 3rd party population scanners.

I never said you get rid of them, just that shooting does will cause more bucks to appear—which has proven true for me and my husband as well. My own experience is that, since I've been shooting does, the amount of bucks have gone up, in the same locations, in the same herds. In Layton, I've seen more elk, moose and black and white tail bucks when I started shooting females. Same thing in Cuatro with roe and red deer. If what you say is accurate, then there's a whole bunch of doe-only herds hiding out somewhere that I've never seen, which is possible.

I can't say if this holds true with species where males and females both render trophies—like ibex, pronghorn, chamois or feral goats. I also don't know if this holds true with mouflons (where females are not trophies) as I don't hunt them as much.

We're not the only ones seeing this as I originally saw this phenomenon from You Tube videos. Also, several of the Youtubers like Flinter and DD33 have said that when you shoot an animal, it can re-spawn as a little higher or lower level, does can re-spawn as bucks and bucks will re-spawn as bucks. Not sure where their information comes from.

Originally posted by Fuzzatron:

So you're saying you want animals to appear predictably in spots that you can just google and spend 5-10 mins on a hunt? This isn't your game. The spawns change, the need zones change, animals move unpredictably at times.

Just play the game and hunt what you find, sometimes you might find a lot of the animal you intend to, sometimes you won't.

There are mechanics in the game that you use to plan and execute your hunts. That's part of the game and that's what he's talking about. Even so, each player's interactions with the environment can cause things to go in different ways for different players. Both my husband and I have the game and while some things are consistent, we don't find the same animals or need zones in the same places all the times.

Example: In Layton you have a mission where you have to shoot a black tail deer at over 200 meters in the Krakon Rope Bridge area. Lots of people talked about using a black tail need zone to get the necessary shot. Problem was, in my game I did not have any black tail need zones where others did. I literally sat for months stuck because I had one black tail (all tracks for one individual) in the entire area and I never saw that one deer at 200 meters. To say I was frustrated is understating the case. Nothing I searched, no one I asked could help me.

I finally came up with my own strategy—I used the game mechanics to move the black tails.
1) Over hunting can remove a need zone
2) When a need zone is removed, the animals move to another place nearby.

I systematically went to every black tail need zone just outside the area and wiped out every deer I could get a bead on. I deliberately over-hunted to destroy black tail zones near the Krakon Rope Bridge area. As a result, the deer moved to new need zones in the area I needed to hunt. I got my black tail within a week.

[Falcon]

Originally posted by Mom_Kat:

I can't say if this holds true with species where males and females both render trophies—like ibex, pronghorn, chamois or feral goats. I also don't know if this holds true with mouflons (where females are not trophies) as I don't hunt them as much.

We're not the only ones seeing this as I originally saw this phenomenon from You Tube videos. Also, several of the Youtubers like Flinter and DD33 have said that when you shoot an animal, it can re-spawn as a little higher or lower level, does can re-spawn as bucks and bucks will re-spawn as bucks. Not sure where their information comes from.

I've heard from sources I trust (who've used a population scanner utility to verify what they're saying) that the number of bucks and does stays relatively fixed within +/- a few animals no matter how many does or bucks you shoot. There is a chance that a very small percentage of does actually do respawn as bucks, but if that's the case it appears they are being 100% offset by bucks respawning as does. It appears that either it works in the most obvious and uncomplicated possible way (animals respawning as the same sex) or there is a mechanism built in to correct any imbalances in the male/female ratio that might result from random chance for them to respawn as the opposite sex. For all practical purposes, it seems animals respawn as the same sex.

From what I've seen, the level of the animal that respawns has nothing to do with what level that animal was in its' previous incarnation. A level 1 buck you shoot could be a diamond in its' next life. I don't know what the exact chances of a diamond spawning are, but from my own experience and other experienced players' observation it's somewhere in the neighborhood of one every 250 animals of the correct sex.

IMHO, the respawn system is really this simple. Animals respawn as the same sex, and any animal of the correct sex has an equal RNG chance of respawning as a diamond. That would be the most simple uncomplicated way to code it, and it matches perfectly with what I've seen.

Is it possible that some small percentage of does respawn as bucks and vice-versa? Is it possible that the level of animal plays a part in determining whether or not it can respawn? Maybe, but probably not.

I've seen various streamers and youtubers describe a number of intricate schemes about how respawns supposedly work. Not 100% of my information is firsthand, and I haven't kept a lab journal or anything, but I've spent enough time investigating these kinds of theories to have debunked the ones I've looked into to my own satisfaction.

You can glean tons of good tips on how to play the game watching streamers. Some of them have quite a bit of time in the game and plenty of good knowledge to share, but intentionally or unintentionally there's also some snake oil being sold on twitch and youtube. It's a form of show business, and I'd be careful about taking certain parts of it as anything more than entertainment.

[AfterCrow]

Some good stuff here. I recommend turning this into an official guide in the guides section. That way you can add chapters and pictures and you can easily refer back to it when people ask in the main forum.
Also, I'd really appreciate a chapter on how to get blacktail (yes, not whitetail) anywhere near the rope bridge area, because of the mission that asks for that.

Originally posted by Falcon:

I've seen various streamers and youtubers describe a number of intricate schemes about how respawns supposedly work. Not 100% of my information is firsthand, and I haven't kept a lab journal or anything, but I've spent enough time investigating these kinds of theories to have debunked the ones I've looked into to my own satisfaction.

Yeah, there's tons of videos with people trying to explain how respawning works even though they obviously have no idea haha. I think its partially because of the business model of youtubers/streamers, because they have to make a living. They can't even take down the video if they know it to be wrong, because the video is a source of income (ad revenue).

[Falcon]

Originally posted by AfterCrow:

Some good stuff here. I recommend turning this into an official guide in the guides section. That way you can add chapters and pictures and you can easily refer back to it when people ask in the main forum.
Also, I'd really appreciate a chapter on how to get blacktail (yes, not whitetail) anywhere near the rope bridge area, because of the mission that asks for that.

Originally posted by Falcon:

I've seen various streamers and youtubers describe a number of intricate schemes about how respawns supposedly work. Not 100% of my information is firsthand, and I haven't kept a lab journal or anything, but I've spent enough time investigating these kinds of theories to have debunked the ones I've looked into to my own satisfaction.

Yeah, there's tons of videos with people trying to explain how respawning works even though they obviously have no idea haha. I think its partially because of the business model of youtubers/streamers, because they have to make a living. They can't even take down the video if they know it to be wrong, because the video is a source of income (ad revenue).

I made it into an official guide, and hit "Publish" but it doesn't seem to be discoverable yet. Is there anything special I need to do so that people can find it?

As for the blacktails off the rope bridge - good luck. I've never done that side quest, but I've heard it's a doozie.

Thanks for all the great guides you've published by the way. They're extremely helpful.

[AfterCrow]

No problem, I'm glad the guides were helpful!

In my experience Steam likes to halt your progress for a while when you publish these things. Allegedly this is to scan your content for links to "suspicious websites" or something like that (But it also lets you post the same text immediately in the forum so I have no idea.) Anyway, I think its normal for it to take a while to get published :)
It should be available to yourself on your profile immediately though.

Edit: I'm still not seeing your guide up there, so there might be a problem, maybe because your profile is private?

Edit2: You can also change the 'visibility' of your own guide when viewing it.

[GIbbralter]

i had an experience of females turning into males on my layton lakes map,
i was hunting in the middle of the map on a game i started over, i was low level, and not really hunting moose at all, mostly whitetail and Elk. and mostly hunting only males
Well, i had so many female moose in the center of the map that i just started shooting them for money and exp, i mean, there were so many of them, did that for a few weeks, not expecting anything to change, rarely seeing male moose, then, something changed, i started seeing big males, not just a few, almost all moose sighting went from single females to a few females and a male moose, and even a bunch of single male moose, the whole population did a change, i had male moose all over the place, so i have to disagree that shooting females only results in more females, i had an abundance of females, shot some, and started getting males

[Falcon]

Originally posted by GIbbralter:

i had an experience of females turning into males on my layton lakes map,
i was hunting in the middle of the map on a game i started over, i was low level, and not really hunting moose at all, mostly whitetail and Elk. and mostly hunting only males
Well, i had so many female moose in the center of the map that i just started shooting them for money and exp, i mean, there were so many of them, did that for a few weeks, not expecting anything to change, rarely seeing male moose, then, something changed, i started seeing big males, not just a few, almost all moose sighting went from single females to a few females and a male moose, and even a bunch of single male moose, the whole population did a change, i had male moose all over the place, so i have to disagree that shooting females only results in more females, i had an abundance of females, shot some, and started getting males

I can tell you that what you experienced was just individuals shuffling around between zones in response to the fact that you were shooting does in certain locations. That does happen, and plenty of us have experienced it. I have it on good authority that overall population numbers and male/female ratio are fixed for all practical purposes. That is from people who've actually verified it, not just anecdotal obseravtions here and there.

Believe what you want. If it makes the game more enjoyable for someone to believe that they're able to change the population then there's no real harm in it. But this is my guide that I've written, and I feel like I have a responsibility to put information in it that is correct to the best of my knowledge. I'm not trying to sell anything here, or get YT/twitch subs by convincing people I have some kind of secret system for success, so I don't have any motivation outside of trying to be genuinely helpful to people having problems with certain aspects of the game.

I also thought I was having an effect on the elk at Layton by shooting a bunch of cows my last playthrough. Then I went back to a lake I hadn't hunted in a couple months because it had no whitetails, and found over 40 cow elk at a single lake. Had the exact same thing happen with bears at SRP. Thought I'd turned a corner and gotten rid of some sows, but it was another case where 20 of them had just respawned to a forgotten corner of the map. You don't get rid of does by shooting them. It is possible to move them around though, and it's sometimes better to have say 20 does in one spot you can just skip on your regular rounds instead of having them mixed into other herds.

I prefer my herds to stay relatively balanced with 2-3 bucks in each. The easiest way to maintain that is to manage your hunting pressure correctly, make sure you're resting your zones for at least 3 days after you shoot them, and just never shoot any does. Every time you shoot a doe, you take a chance that she will respawn into a spot that was being used by a buck before meaning if you've also shot 2 bucks out of a zone that only had two and a doe you've shot respawns into that herd, you'll be left with a single buck herd which is less than ideal for grinding respawns.