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[MenacesWithSpikes]

Right now I try to have only one dedicated hunter and fisher in my embarks, because I don't know just how much it would take to hunt/fish them out.  (But I certainly know that they CAN be hunted/fished out, because I've done so many times in the past.)

Has anyone yet done !!SCIENCE!! on what the limits are?  Do they vary a lot by biome?  Anyone know?

[Telgin]

I've never had problems with hunting an area dry, because I think at least in .31.25 animals repopulate correctly.  Sometimes slowly, but they will repopulate.  I'm not sure about .34.11.

Fishing is another matter.  I think it's broken so that even a single fisher will deplete your fish stocks eventually.  That's unfortunate and makes fishing mostly useful for getting a fort by early on before farming takes over.

In any case, I've had a single hunter not deplete my animal stocks for a decade, so maybe a single hunter will work.  One fisher depleted all of my fish in about 5 years, I think.

[CaptainArchmage]

The depletion thing is why I generally do not do fishing. My reasons against hunting are the same (more of a concern though) and also the rate at which it clogs the units list.

Out of curiosity, has anyone tried upping the population numbers of fish in the raws to something insane, and checking how that affects depletion?

[Tirion]

What if you set the orders for zone-only fishing, and leave some ponds out of the zones so fish can survive there and repopulate the other zones?

[CaptainArchmage]

What if you set the orders for zone-only fishing, and leave some ponds out of the zones so fish can survive there and repopulate the other zones?

Not entirely sure how the population tracking works and whether it includes reproduction of fish. As far as I know, the game will keep track of some locations, for example it will track the fish population in a river or ocean, (or volcano), and it will also keep track of the "swamps", which refers to the murky pools in the eight directions plus the centre part of the map. It is possible that the fish are tracked in the entire biome, or alternatively in each water biome plus each sector of the map that is land. I don't think the populations move between biomes, but the fish may move between sectors of land within a biome. Hope this made it clear.

[HiEv]

I try to embark next to an ocean lately, that way I can keep fishing when my river/brook/ponds run out of things to fish.

The rapid depletion of fishable creatures is one of the bugs listed in the "The Worst Bug" poll, if you care to vote for it (it's bug #2780: Turtles went extinct on my map (applies to all aquatic vermin)).

[Panando]

My understanding of hunting, is that provided at least 1 creature from each pack is allowed to leave the map alive, that species will never go extinct. Of course that doesn't help with automated hunters, only if you do hunting manually using melee or marksdwarf squads (which is my preference, both because it allows fine control of the culling, and because manually controlled marksdwarves will beat the animal to death after running out of bolts. It also doubles as a way to train marksdwarves).

The animal population is counted per biome, so if the map covers 2 or more biomes, you will get 2 or more times the number of animals to kill before extinction occurs.

Extincting all the animals is rare, but can happen. Once on a map the only animals I got were big cats. The big cats have low populations, and are solitary. So after killing about 4 big cats of different species, I never got any more animals. More often at least some of the species will have high populations so be difficult to extinct.

It's really easy to extinct fish species. Basically fishing is non-viable in the long run.

If you want to find out more about animal populations you should check out Sphalerite's thread on farming sea serpents, because he goes into quite some detail.

[jwest23]

My latest attempt at sustainable fishing has been to modify the populations of vermin fish from their relatively measly numbers to 10,000 - 20,000 per biome.

I haven't tested it thoroughly to see if it works, however.

[knutor]

Since fishing behind fortified walls has been nerfed, like in safe wells, thru grates over submerged cisterns, I've given up on fishing, too.  That was a food satisfying design, I used prior to Toady nerfing it.  [34.11] doesn't seem to even produce shells.  I must either be picking shell-less embarks all the time or its nerfed.  Not sure what is going on with fishing, but something changed for the worst.  I don't bother with fishing.

I roll with lots of hunters.  They give me a mobile restraint, to attach a hunting dog onto.  What I do is open up my cavern areas, in advanced world generation, however.  As I hate when they can't find ranged warfare down there.  A more open, less dense cavern, is ideal for subteranean hunting.  Troglodytes are great to hunt.  On the topside, I use hunters too, but haven't had any luck burrowing them.  So I dunno.

There needs to be somekind of restraint on them when they hunt up top.  So many times, they die first thing, when a Siege occurs, making them kinda weak.  But in early game, they can be lots of fun.  One thing I found, is I sometimes need to edge on the animal respawn, by sending my militia out to wipe out those flying raven, that seem to linger on the edge of the region, 4 z levels off the ground. 

Hunters just don't find some of these critters, specially the flyers.  Not sure if that's a bug or not.  But a militia squad will.  Assisting the hunters now and again, with the squad keeps the HUNT action progressing smoothly.  Sincerely, Knutor

[PainRack]

Do your cavern hunters survive? The mobs there usually overpower my hunters easily, via numbers if nothing else. Above ground hunters appear to synchronise their.... hunts easily, since you get one or two mob appearing. For the caverns however, I do find my group of hunters splitting up, with say one or two going to cavern 1 to hunt the troll while another 2 go further down to hunt the giant cave crocodile.

I ultimately gave up on cavern hunting when FBs emerged.....

[Azated]

I've had about 10 fishermen at my river constantly for 6 years now, and they still catch all kinds of fish.

I actually reached the point where I had to turn off fishing labor for a year or so because all my stockpiles were full of raw cod.

[knutor]

Nothing changed with ocean, river and brook fishing. 

Try it behind your fortification, fed by a subteranean lake? No fish there. 34.0x early version had fish, 7 thru 11 doesn't. 
Try fishing the drain, of your happy generating waterfall?  No fish there. same versions effected.

Hunters ability, relies on his ambush and ammo type.  Some die down there, I lost two to a giant spider, in a very tight dense cavern area.  I noticed that the hunting dogs down under, didn't stealth up fast enough, not sure why that is.  Is ambush a topside ONLY skill?  Trogie spotted him, like he wasn't stalking.  What do you think?  Maybe animals ambush skill is really low level, comparatively, I guess shark dentistry is required. 

Be nice to be able to Hunt down under, without xbows, but use melee weapons, then we wouldn't have to adjust the default cavern density and openness.  It also would be nice to have an observation/ambush danger-like training room, somewhere in the fortress.   Maybe have it be a hunting cabin, or some type of sanctuary for them.  With a meat pole.  HAHA! 

Has anyone designed or seen one of those?  I tried painting off a Hunting Burrow and something similar to a Hunting lodge, but Hunt doesn't seem to work inside a burrow.  They stalk and observe inside burrows just fine, but target nothing.  Sincerely, Knutor