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[Un67]

I have a hunter (who has a crossbow, a quiver, and he has access to a decent amount of bolts), so how, exactly, do I make him hunt? I've turned hunting on/off and yet he's still not doing it, or am I just being impatient?

[JoRo]

Are there animals to hunt?

[Un67]

Yep, there are a few mountain goats on the map, I'm not quite sure what's wrong...

[Biowraith]

Make sure you've got ammo assigned to hunters under the [m]ilitary screen, [f] for ammunition.

Also I think make sure you don't have any of the ammo in bins (not sure if that's still an issue, but best to be safe).

Probably best to make sure they don't have any other skills enabled - not sure what priority Hunting gets.

With all those boxes ticked my hunters have been happily going out shooting at anything that looks remotely tasty.

[Un67]

I did that, but he's still moping around like he has nothing better to do...

[Beeskee]

Does the hunter have bolts in their quiver?  If not, make some more bolts, and maybe increase the amount of bolts assigned to the hunter group.

Is the hunter assigned to a burrow which doesn't include the areas the animals are in?  If so, add the outside area to the hunter's burrow, or make a new burrow for them.


If all else fails, try enabling the hunting labor, disabling their other labors, and waiting a bit. It does take them a little while to start hunting.

[ledgekindred]

As everyone else has said, make sure he has a crossbow and a quiver and there are bolts available - wood or metal work fine but he will use more wood bolts to take down prey.  Toady modified ammo in .11 or .12 so that you don't need to explicitly go in and assign to hunters, they'll grab what they can.  I haven't had a problem with mine picking up ammo from a bin or not, but go ahead and make an ammo stockpile with no bins assigned to be sure.  Turn off all his tasks but "Hunting."  If there are animals available, he should hunt.  If you embark with a dwarf where "Ambush" is his highest stat, he will automatically be assigned as "hunter" and get a "free" quiver and crossbow on embark and should start hunting immediately.

Animals come and go with the seasons.  If he's not hunting right away it might be because there are no animals on the map that season.  I get mountain goats in Fall and Elephants in Spring I think.  Some seasons there's nothing to hunt.

In three years my lone hunter is now Legendary Marksman and Archer and Master Ambusher and it's all I can do with three butchers to keep up with everything he kills.

[Mini]

Toady modified ammo in .11 or .12 so that you don't need to explicitly go in and assign to hunters, they'll grab what they can.

Technically it just defaults to having 100 bolts to hunters. So if you have too many hunters for the bolts they are assigned you can give them more, or tell them only to use bolts made out of a certain material or group thereof.

[teoleo]

my hunters consume ammunition but no prey in the fortress...and do not believe they have killed anything

[SenorPez]

It may have been coincidence, but my Hunters didn't start to hunt until I built a Kennels.

[FleshForge]

Weird, I never have problems with hunters, a single hunter produces gobs of meat and bone as long as there are things for them to hunt.  I've never had to do anything to get them to go either, other than embark with a crossbow and a quiver - do you have a quiver for him?  Not sure if that's required but I've always taken one.  You do have the hunting labor enabled right?

Bone bolts are just fine, my various hunter dwarves have no trouble even with huge stuff like elephants.

edit: when you do get him to work, consider a dedicated butcher/tanner and a dedicated cook making lavish meals, to make use of all the materials he'll bring back.  High quality prepared food (which you'll have heaps of) is a pretty good trade export item.

[Un67]

He has everything he needs but he is still doing nothing, I am getting rather ticked off at him...

In any case, thanks for the help, I can only hope he'll start soon (yes the labor is enabled, he has all the supplies)

[Lord Darkstar]

Does he have bolts?

It seems that dwarves cannot collect bolts to put into their quivers if the bolts are in a bin. That includes hunters.

[Un67]

Hmm... how do you take them OUT of the bin, then?

[Astramancer]

Step 1: Disables bin on the stockpile (reduce number of bins to 0)
Step 2: Assign bins to be dumped (be sure to not mark the bolts, too!)
Step 3:
Step 4: Profit!