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[Zombie0hour]

I just wanted to get everyone's opinion on hunting on DF. I am not a big fan of farming and I find hunting can supplement the food supply very well. What are your feelings regarding its use?

[Kulantan]

The first thing I do for a new hunter is build him a coffin. They die like flies. It's not because of the animals often, mostly they are caught returning to the fort by a siege. The only thing worse is fisher dwarves near carp, and at least with them you can create a fishing cistern. Usually when I get one it's off to the markscorps with them as they are already slightly trained.

[Vester]

Meat is good, but hunters certainly do have a much higher death rate than any other dwarf profession in the game.

[Rvlion]

Hunting gives you a lot of meat, leather, fat, bones and whatever else one of those creatures carry with them.
You cannot however brew booze from anything the hunter brings back.

Personally I never bother myself much with hunting. In my fortresses newly imigrated hunters in which I forget to remove his profession tend to get themselves killed while trying to hunt something they are not supposed too like fire imps, aligators or other large predators.

If you really don’t want to farm for food, you can always bring animal pairs on embark for breeding and gather plants for brewing booze.

I dont mind farming and thus have 1 10*10 plumb helmet farm and some smaller farms which I can use for other plants (which mostly I dont), Also I try to bring at least 1 pair of cows / muskox’s / horses with me for breeding purposes and butchering them for meat and leather.

I do think that farming provides a better (but mostly safer) food suply in vanilla DF then hunting for animals.

[XSI]

Hunting is good if you get a migrant hunter and already have a good food supply, but in general it's not really worth using a lot of dwarves on. As mentioned, hunters die very fast if they start hunting things they shouldn't hunt, like fire imps, or a pack of wolves.

When the hunter is successful however, it adds some nice variation to your food stocks, and on maps with elephants, that's a lot of meat/bones/fat to keep you busy.

Basicly, it's nice to have, but not essential.

[Helmaroc]

My current fortress has a team of hunters, it works well for me. But as Vester and XSI mentioned, inexperienced hunters die fairly often.

[blah28722]

Hunters are a nice profession if you decide to embark with a military dwarf and you want him to do more than haul.

I also use them if my map has a large animal population. That's later on though.

[Lesconrads]

Hunting isn't really good for mature fortresses... but especially in the beginning, when you get ginormous migration-waves, they can save your ass. Just be sure to get them at least some wrestling-training and a few dogs, before sending them out. It might help to save their ass while they try to do so with yours .

If you never get above some 30 dwarfs, you might try to hunt for food and shop for booze (or the like). More than that? I don't think so.

[Rowanas]

I set hunters to work all the time. Eventually I notice them a couple years later and they have glorious stats (the military never get ambush skill xp) and a wide range of skills. In the hunt for food they usually get lots of marksdwarf skill, some wrestling, some hammerdwarf and some ambush. It's like military training except it's useful and broader. I don't have the patience to be switching my recruits from one thing to another, so it's the only way my marksdwarves get wrestling.

[Dakk]

A few hunters in an area with a decent number of animals can keep a fortress going for a few years actualy, the problem is that, in order to support a fortress, not only do you also need a dedicated butcher and tanner if you don't want to waste anything, but they also need to kill faster then wildlife spawns in order to support your fortress, and you need to remember to make bone/wooden bolts once in a while or they'll end up hammering their targets with the crossbow.

Pluses: Hunting usualy brings alot of different meats so your dwarves will probably never get tired of eating those meals, most animals generate 5 pieces of meat and fat, and will provide you with a good, steady source of bones. It also goes very well with tanning, so if you want leather goods or some leather armor, they're your dwarves, plus they'll become legendary marksdwarves in a few years, depending on what they're hunting, and if they survive that long.
Its also nice to have a legendary hunter outside during sieges, at certain times, i had one wipe out half of the siege party on his own.

Cons: They tend to get overwhelmed by the wildlife at first, but getting them some hunting dogs for the first months will make them considerably more durable. They tend to get caught in ambushes often, and getting caught in the crossfire during sieges. You mostly need to train their marksdwarf skill for a bit before sending them out, preferably with some expendable armor, and they also need quivers.
Also, once your wildlife has all been killed, they'll be useless for a loooong time unless you draft them, but then they'll become champions really fast and you won't be able to undraft them when wildlife respawns.

[Shurhaian]

I've come to despise hunting.

Not least because the dwarves can be so stupid about it. I had one dwarf that had hammer skill, and used it to good effect to take out a fire man(the magma pipe came up to the surface right beside the biggest patch of soil I could find, good for initial construction and digging down/in for farms).

Give him the hunting labor(AFTER some training as a marksdwarf), and for reasons unclear he gets himself killed by random wildlife.

It might not be bad except for a few problems: it's insanely high priority; hunters won't come back even to sleep, and get miserable; they seem to lose most of their combat skill the moment they're hunters instead of soldiers; they still don't know to carry big stacks of bolts, and are all too willing to go toe to toe.

[Skorpion]

Hunting is inefficient and gets dwarves killed like nothing else. Goblins, and trying to wrestle migrating predators, for the most part.
Seriously, farming isn't that hard. Chain up some animals, get two indoor farm plots and an outdoor one going, and set up a fishing area on a brook for some fish.
After a while, you'll have more roasts than you know what to do with.

[Uber dwarf2.0]

It really depends on what they have, if their unarmed well your goona have to be expecting injurys very often, if they have a Crossbow and any kind of bolts then they should be good

[RandomNumberGenerator]

In 80% of my fortresses, the entire food supply is based on a combination of sweet pods and plump helmets. In the other 20% of my fortresses, 80% of my food supply consists of those anyway. This is because Farms require the least micromanagement. Simply prepare your fields and plant your seeds, and after a couple generations I never even have to pay attention to it. I just set my Farmer's Workshop, Kitchen and Still to Repeat Task and never give it a second thought. I can prepare enough food for over 100 dwarves with just three dwarves: a planter/extracter, a cook and a brewer.

With Fishing, you need to periodically assign the task of Clean Fish. Hunting means you need to regularly rend fat and tan the hides, or suffer miasma. No miasma with plants, worst that happens is you grow too much and the unused plants wither. It also seems that it is possible to run out of both fish and animals(I've never run out myself, as I don't exploit these food sources), but plant supplies can't be depleted as long as you have seeds.

[Joseph Miles]

If nothing else, they're wonderful to have for when you need an extra hammerdwarf during a siege or whatnot.

I've got one right now that I'll follow around while waiting for other things to finish up, and it never gets old watching him bash those goats into the chasm.
Though for how practical they are as a primary source of food, I dunno...