A Bit Of (Irrational) Guilt

Might take a break from playing The Hunter again after today. However, first I have to share with all of you the beautiful pictures and live shots I took today. (Yes, even live deer! Mostly... That's where the guilt comes in. I'll explain in a bit.)



I was taking some basic shots. Something about this stump really made me happy, so I decided to take a nice shot of it and practice my Rule Of Thirds (leftover from Photography class). I like how it came out. While I was framing this picture, however, I heard several mule deer call. I responded with my imitation call, and headed toward the sound.



For the last couple of days, I've been following this herd off and on. Always too far away to see them, and by the time one comes into view, it's isolated and I usually try to take it as a trophy. Today, I managed to catch a distant picture of the herd. Two deer can be easily seen, and there were four others, however they're mostly behind trees.



Later on, again following calls rather than tracks, this lovely girl and I came face to face as she climbed over a pile of logs. She froze, I froze. I had two choices - gun, or camera. I chose camera. Right after I snapped this picture, she turned and bolted over the logs... and here came the moment of guilt.

The Hunter is an incredibly realistic hunting game - down to the fact that panicked deer can injure themselves. After this beautiful girl bolted, I went around the logs to challenge myself and pick up her trail. I wanted to see if I could track her down a second time, knowing the general direction she'd run.

On the other side of the logs, I found a trail - but not the one I'd expected. I found blood.

I hadn't fired a shot, except for the camera, but the flash had scared her. In going over the logs, she hurt herself. I started following the trail of blood spatters and hoofprints, until I found her less than half a mile from the pile of logs.



She was laying in a pool of blood that you can kind of see in this picture. I walked around and her head followed me as I walked, watching me. She was breathing in quick, shallow pants, but her eyes were bright. In my moving around her, I saw what was wrong - the hip she's laying on is a bit mangled - it isn't surprising she didn't get too far.

Like a horse, when a deer breaks a leg, there's really nothing to be done. And that I was in a hunting game and couldn't exactly call wildlife services or anything, I only had one choice.



I pulled out my rifle, whispered an apology, aimed carefully, and shot her in the head. I put her out of her misery. But the way she was staring at me... I've never had a game feel so real that I felt shaken up afterwards. I feel that way right now. I wandered for nearly half an hour after "bagging" her. I ignored tracks, I ignored calls. I spotted a Feral Hog through my binoculars, and spooked a couple of pheasants into flight.

Through my wandering, though, I found something lovely, and it's the last thing I did before logging off of the game.



This is probably modeled after a real place, but it's beauty took my breath away. I released my guilt over the doe and let it float away on the wind as I took several photos of this beautiful vista. Then I closed the game and logged out of The Hunter.

It got a touch too real today, and I'm still shaken up. My guilt is COMPLETELY unfounded - the doe was nothing but a mass of pixels with a wonderfully designed AI that mimics the behavior of a deer. I can't turn the flash off on my in-game camera, so my only other choice would've been to shoot her anyway. Either way, it turned out the same, and I got the trophy. It's only a game.

So why do I still feel just a bit sad?

Morning Stroll

I recently reread the book Merle's Door by Ted Kerasote, one of my favorite books of all time. As usual, it awakened in me a need to get out into the wild and hunt. However, despite what my taxidermic collection might say, I am not a hunter in real life. I satisfy this craving through video games for right now.

If I'm in the mood for a quick run, I play Hunting Unlimited 2009, or Deer Hunter 2005. Sometimes I'll play Carnivores or another more fanciful hunting game. But this book awakened a need for something realistic, so I went for the most realistic hunting game I know of: The Hunter.

Now, I have a free account, so all I can hunt are Mule Deer, but that's fine. It's the area and he feeling I love so much. I hunted for over an hour today, and while I spotted a doe, I was so shocked to see her that I couldn't get a shot off in time. Instead, I spent time tracking a couple of deer, and enjoyed the lovely views.



I started the hunt at six am, game time, and enjoyed the sight of the beautiful pink sunrise that greeted me.

Within an hour, I was caught in a sudden downpour that made tracking difficult. I lost the deer I'd been tracking in the resulting mud, but I was left with a gorgeous image as I looked to the sky.



I loved this image so much, it didn't matter to me that I didn't get a deer. I saw a pheasant and tried to get some pictures of it, but I couldn't get close enough for it to be defined on the camera, so I won't share those photos of fail with you. However, I feel refreshed and calm, as if I really did just go on a nature walk. I'm going back into the game now, and perhaps this time I will bag a deer. More photos to follow - I will probably edit this entry. :)

EDITING!

Went hunting again and finally got the hang of tracking. I still have yet to even see a buck, but I bagged 4 mule deer does, and managed to get a couple of good pictures of a live pheasant. :D



This was the first deer I took down. I didn't think I'd hit her at first (I forgot to hold down space when firing, which causes your character to hold their breath and therefore steady your aim), but then I found blood on the ground and tracked her a few hundred yards to where she fell. :D



The second deer I managed to hit was a stomach shot, and had it been real I would've seriously apologized to it for that. It walked a very long way, almost a mile, before it laid down and died. It took me nearly 20 minutes to find it. It looked so peaceful laying there that I aimed my camera carefully to get the best shot.



This was the only deer I hit that fell where it stood. Inspection showed I'd taken out one of it's neck vertebrae, and death was instant. I angled the shot so the entry wound could be seen.



This deer didn't walk nearly as far as the second one before it fell, but it did walk far enough that it laid down and died. Again, I angled the picture carefully so it looked to be resting.

And now for the live shots!

I'd been tracking the 4th deer in the above set, after having shot it, when something moved in my peripheral vision. "No way," I thought. "I hit that in the lung... it couldn't still be walking around." I brought up my binoculars and looked. I was shocked to see a pheasant, walking calmly in low grass. I crouched and moved closer, expecting it to flush at any moment and fly away. But it stayed, and I kept getting closer. Eventually I dropped all the way and belly crawled toward it. The following shots are what I got before it finally noticed me and flew away.







A very pretty bird and I was very happy to have seen it. I don't have a license for pheasant or it would've been a trophy for sure, as close as I got to it. However, I loved seeing it walk around. So far I haven't been able to get any photos of live deer - they're always too far away and spook before I get close enough for a good shot. But some day, I will just lay in wait and get a nice picture.

Not of the first buck I see, though. He's going in my trophy collection for sure. :P

Brewmaster of Disappointment

Wow's Ocktoberfest-alike, Brewfest, ended this past Wednesday. One of the mechanics of the holiday is that there is a "holiday boss" accessable through the Dungeon Finder. On your first kill each day of the holiday, you receive an extra "treasure" contained in a "keg-shaped treasure chest." In this chest, you can find one of five things - a dagger, a mace, two unique mounts (Brewfest Kodo and Brewfest Ram), or.... nothing. Or, rather, not nothing. But a few Brewfest tokens, the holiday currency, and around 25 Justice Points - average for killing a boss.

Being the mount-aholic I am, I dutifully went every single day of the holiday, killed the boss, collected my reward, and opened it. All but 1 day (on which I received the dagger - ironically the day after I'd gotten something better than it and so couldn't use it anymore), I received the latter prize - that is, tokens and JP.

Now, this could just be luck-of-the-draw - and in all honesty, it is. However, I'm a BIT steamed. See.... Everyone else I know got a mount once during the holiday. There were people in chat complaining of having gotten the same mount 3 days in a ROW. Lona got the Ram, Nyx got the Kodo, Kata got a Ram, my friend Enya got a Ram.. But no mount for me. Now I'm happy for Lona, who I know is working toward the 100 Mounts achievement (more feverishly than I am, honestly, as she has the Nether Rays, which I don't yet, and she will have the Tol Barad drake in another day or so)... But it just felt unfair that I didn't get a mount.

Yes, I am complaining about a random number generator that refused to generate a number in my favor. :P NO, I'm not actually angry, and I know there's always next year.

In the mean time, I look forward to this month's holiday, Hallows End, and I hope to lay my hands on the Headless Horseman's mount which will drop from HIS treasure chest (I predict "pumpkin shaped". :P). Every mount I get is one step closer to the Blue Dragonhawk that is my eventual goal. I know I'll get there eventually. But the way I'm going, Lona will be tooling around on hers months before I get there.

Then again, I only have 4 steps left on "What A Long Strange Trip...", which will reward me with something I've long sought after: a proto-drake. And I'll eventually work up the patience to camp the Time-Lost Proto-Drake for days and days until it decides to show itself to me. And I'll keep leveling Archaeology in the hopes of obtaining the fossil raptor mount (seeing Lona with hers makes me jealous - I'M the paleontologist, dangit! :P ) And I'll eventually grind up the patience to finish the dang Sha'tari Skyguard grind for the Nether Rays (at which point, I swear, I am NEVER going into Outland again if I can help it... not unless they do something to streamline it or whatever... as it is, it's my least favorite area and makes the slog from L60 to L70 absolutely intolerable for me - which is why my characters seem to get stuck there since I don't like dungeoning, and if I want to get through that 10 levels without questing, that's kind of how I have to do it).

All things said and done, I'm still making progress on that achievement... and there may be an Ancient Eyes post later this weekend, because a LOT of stuff has happened since my last post and I feel the need to catch up. But right now, I'm going to go back to my homework. Blogging was a nice break, but right now Stats has my attention and priority.

And that, at least, is a certain probability. ;)