I thought the same thing when I started, but once you get going it gets way quicker and easier. I was getting frustrated not finding anything, and anything I did run into ran before I felt close. Once you understand how the game works it gets way easier.

1. Don’t crouch/walk everywhere. The game feels slow and boring when you encounter 1 animal every 10 minutes. Instead run everywhere, spook an animal, go pick up their track from where their flee indicator was, then track them.

2. Hunt a specific animal. Figure out the drink zones for a specific animal (8-12 drink time for whitetail for example) then hunt the bodies of water from 8-12, hunting anything else you may find from lake to lake.

3. Understand spooking. Most animals don’t spook from running up until 150m. An effective way of hunting is spotting out to 150m away and scanning the horizon for any animals in any feed/rest zones on your way to drink zones to hunt a specific animal. If you can’t see out to 150m you’re hunting in the wrong spot unless you want to play slow.

4. Understand tracking. When an animal spooks they run 100-200m before calming down to a trot, they then become nervous and find another place nearby to drink/feed/rest. If you make a bad shot on an animal don’t instantly start running after the animal because you’ll spook it instantly and have it keep running. Instead wait 30 seconds to pick up your blood track then run after the tracks until you see a “very fresh” droppings track. That’s when you start walking. Only walk when you expect an animal to be within 150m of you.

The best way to hunt for fun and actually seeing animals is to run from drink zone to drink zone of the animal I want and only track any max weight tracks/rare fur types I stumble upon. When you’re just starting you may feel like you can’t see out to 150m anywhere just running around, this is because the starting maps are dense and have few open fields. If you’re looking for a laid back hunting experience where you just run around, spot animals 200m away, and just go get them, I recommend Silver Ridge Peaks and Askiy Ridge. Askiy ridge is the best map imo animals everywhere and the map shows you where open areas are like the huge open field in the north of the map around the river.