Skill Lore Expansion! - Hunting

[Balian Martell]

I was thinking of fleshing out the Hunting Skill in the lore.

In specific I wanted to detail out the process of hunting, the different styles of hunting, the field dressing process, and the general progression of skill.
While some these *may* be made into their own skills, I feel as it would be more 'neat' to have them fall under the wider umbrella that would be the hunting skill.


Thoughts?

[Karyk]

i think this is a great idea. If you need any assistance navigating the process through the world dev forum let me know.

[Prophet]

Hunting has been started. Feel free to look it up and continue from the already existing base. Field dressing would likely not go with hunting. I think that would go with leather working which includes skinning or cooking since it's the first step preparing the meat. I would ask a founder for a final day on that.

[Karyk]

I couldn't find a Hunting article started anywhere in the Workshop/Archives, Peer Review/Archives, or Founder Review. Closest thing I could find was Tracking.

[Balian Martell]

I cannot seem to find anything on hunting in the development forums,
would you be able to link it?

As far as field dressing, I can see why you could say it belongs to other skills,
and I attribute that to the 'intersectionality' of hunting with other skills,
however I think its more appropriate place would be under hunting, as you need to begin the process of field dressing as soon as possible after time of death.
I see it as full cirlce type thing. Hunting is not just stalking your prey and killing it,
its also what you do with it immediately after. If anything you could say it may under tanning, as that is the process of turning raw hide into leather, however it is the hunters that tend to provide the hide and meat for the different professions to actually work on.

[Prophet]

Tanning is always awarded as leather working. I will look for article when I have more time. I know Tribal started out about a year ago.

[Artigan Crowley]

I think it would make more sense for hunting and field dressing to be separate skills, simply because "hunting" is a term that can be applied in multiple ways. Yes, butchering an animal should ideally be done immediately after death, but hunting does not automatically mean "animal." The hunting skill could be applied to pursuing humanoids through outdoors, hunting pigeons over city rooftops, to a bunch of lords with their hundred hounds and horses chasing down a single fox for sport, even to hunting an animal through ocean (in the case of, say, an orca Kelvic hunting a seal, where it would presumably eat its prey raw and have no need to dress it.) Predatory Kelvics in particular might carry out an entire hunt with no need or desire to dress their prey.

Also, dressing a dead animal does not necessarily mean you hunted it first. You would use the exact same skills to skin a wild pig as you would to skin a pig in a slaughterhouse, where you would not be hunting the animal beforehand. Also, Mizahar is pretty dangerous; if you've killed something, it's entirely likely you would attract the attention of something huge if you just opened your prey up and let the whole region smell it. Yes, it's best to skin something immediately, but it's better to live to skin a stiffened corpse than to die skinning a fresh one.

With that said, though I do believe it would be useful to have a "catch-all" skill regarding dressing an animal; I've written many hunting threads on my other PC and have sometimes wished that skinning and butchery were combined into a general animal-dressing skill. (Having skinned a few animals myself, I've always found it funny to be an individual skill – it's not that hard once you get the hang of it.) It would also be cool to mention not only the skin and meat, but the organs as well – cleaning stomachs and intestines to be water containers, keeping the poop from contaminating the meat, etc. There's also the matter of cleaning up after yourself in a way that doesn't attract scavengers, but perhaps that would be more lore-based?

To the original point, though, hunting and field dressing feels to me like the difference between shooting an arrow and making an arrow. The two skills go hand in hand, but knowing one does not promise that you know the other. It will be quicker, easier and cheaper if you know both, but they are two tasks that use entirely different tools, tactics and time.

[Karyk]

I feel hunting begins well before the hunt, but ends at the kill or capture. Hunting includes many aspects, as well as several skills. Many of the things that hunting, I feel, includes are:
-Researching the hunting area
-Researching the prey
-Knowing how the loss of prey affects the area
-Locating the prey through the use of Tracking or Stealth (or other methods).
-Acquiring the prey through many means be it a simple arrow shot or driving it off a cliff or simply chasing it until it succumbs to exhaustion.

I could be terribly mistaken on this next point, but I feel like Hunting is Tactics with a singular purpose; Acquire the prey.

Hunting is the intent and mindset to the goal of acquiring the prey, every other skill simply supports that.

But now I'm rambling, but that's what I got.

[Andor]

Hey I'm pretty new here but I hope you don't mind my input (still finishing my CS).

From my look at the skills list I wonder if Hunting needs to be a skill. It's already broken into several smaller ones such as Tracking, Trapping, Leatherworking, Food Preservation, and the assorted Weapons lores and perhaps a few others. All of those are the skills a hunter uses/employs. So why a Hunting skill?

I mean isn't the point of the Lores to be oriented towards more specific knowledge such as the common feeding habits of a rabbit. You then pair your specific knowledge with tracking or trapping or weaponry (bow for example). If your "hunt" is successful you then proceed to preserve the food, skin it, etc.

[Wymez]

Reviving this because some comments have me thinking.

1.) Andor, it isn't necessarily supurfluous. A lot of skills are complimentary skills but I can see where Tracking and Hunting can seem interchangeable. I see Hunting as acting with the intent to take down prey as a means for survival, sustenance, fun, and even profit. Tracking is making use of the Observation skill to follow trails (and can even spill into the Scouting skill) and definitely something a successful hunter needs. A lot of skills spill over in to other skills, it happens. I see Hunting - and other skills like it that may appear to be similar to other complimentary skills - existing as a standalone to be eligible for certain jobs in the job list. Also as an aside, a tracker won't necessarily also be a hunter.

2.) Personally, I file 'field dressing' under the Butchery skill since it's processing the animal. This then can lead into other complimentary skills such as Tanning to preserve the hide, Cooking to eat the meat and even Food Preservation to keep the leftovers.

3.) Dravite/Tribal didn't do the Hunting skill, he did the Tracking skill and deleted it. The archived peer review thread is here (in case it may be useful to you, Balian).

Also:

Tanning is always awarded as leather working.

I never realised this :| I always figured Tanning to be the process of making leather whereas Leatherworking is a type of craft where things are created from said leather. I also figured not every leathersmith needs to tan their own hides and not ever tanner would go on to craft their own end products. I also figured there was a need for the separation of the two since both have their own separate occupations.

Anyways, I've lobbed in my $.02. I'm really excited to see this developed, Balian - it needs some love! However, I can totally see how daunting and confusing it may seem since it has so many satellite/complimentary skills and so many aspects to look at. I'm digging what you have in the workshop so far, however I might suggest changing 'iv. Spear hunting' to something like 'hunting with weapons' since then you can cover bows, bolas, slings, spears, any projectile under the sun, etc (and it keeps with the flow of what you already have). Deep breaths and good luck!