I have a question about where to place hunter’s cabins - especially as the town matures; Is it better to place the cabins close to their work areas or within the confines of the town, near smoke houses and storage?
I place them where their work areas are going to be, but also try to make sure that isn’t too far from the town.
But what if you had to make a choice? By now my hunting grounds are pretty far from town.
Still probably put them out there, but also put up a temporary shelter they can pop into for meals/a quick break before getting back to work.
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At early stages I sometimes put hunter cabins closer to deer spawns. It gives me vision on the map.
But later I prefer to place them all together close to barns. And build there smokehouses, tannery, clobber cobbler shop.
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“Clobber” is Australian for extremely casual clothing, the type which Op shops reject.
Just based on my own observation, I noticed that hunters placed very close to the deer spawn tend to over-hunt the deer to the point where the spawn disappears.
A modest distance between hunter and deer seems to be optimum for collection and replenishment.
Personally I group hunter cabins at a distance from the town center in each of the cardinal directions leading out of town. Usually two to three hunter cabins in a grouping.
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First of all, thank you to all of you who took the time to offer replies.
I did a few tests - placed some hunter’s cabins close to hunting grounds and then some within my town, and as far as I can see, the placement of the cabin makes very little difference in terms of the annual output.
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The only thing I seen distance affect is if you have a low number spawn location. If the hunter cabin is close to it then the hunter will clear out the spawn location pretty quickly. While if the cabin’s a fair distance away the clearance will be slower or not completely cleared it due to the time the hunter is taking hunting, butchering, taking meat to storage.
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I start with them close to Warehouse Storage for hides and tallow, so they don’t have to spend a lot of time transporting goods, and put a smoker nearby.
Later, after barns and chicken coops start supplying more of the meats, then I move them all to a ‘raw meat’ area, with their own, dedicated storage and plenty of smokers to handle the annual harvest, away from the prepared foodstuffs, so the townsfolk are not tempted to stock raw, fast-spoiling goods.
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Deerspawn are map functions, not resource nodes.
Unlike Clay, Stone, Iron or Coal, they can be decimated, especially low-number spawns, but they soon return, in greater number, where other resources do not.
A one or two will return as a five or six, then grow even further over time.
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That’s pretty much the story of my town 
Although it would be remiss if I did not add the fact that I often get my poor villagers killed, I must say that I cannot help myself and tend to put my Hunter Cabins right where I think I would find one. 
Yeah … I am still fighting the idea of whether or not I am playing this game, or if the game is playing me, and my villagers have certainly paid the price for that.
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Randim question associated to hunters and decimation /respawning of deer herds. has anyone tried maintaining a herd by feeding it ? I have only been playing since like Mid- March and you know what they say about people learning something new / that they reach that point where they THINK they know a lot but really only know enough to be dangerous ?
I saw deer spawn points that were a bit far and only 2 or 3 deer each. on the other side of town, deer closer in were stealing crops. I wondered if I could increase the small and far away herds and “lead closer” by feeding them. So I planted a little 5 X 5 farm plot out there and only run clover on it. After 2 years, the herds are larger and holding up to hunting close by.
Is this a thing ? Or am I crazy? Does it only seem to be working because I wanted it to? If anybody else gives it a try, let me know what you think.
I bet you’re spending too much time transporting necessary goods from one place to another.
There is no mechanism for the deer to ‘feed’ other than on farmed goods.
I’ve seen no positive result in herd size from letting deer take crops.
On the other hand, I have seen small herds eliminated, only to have the map respawn the herd in larger numbers.
On my current map, there is a deer herd that respawned up high on a mountain when I started chopping the forest they were in at the base of it. When I planted a 5X5 with clover, they come down the mountain to eat and the hunter can reach them. Don’t know if it is a unique case because the herd moved when I took their forest, but it is working for now, so … . And it doesn’t take much to plant clover, which isn’t even harvested. if it IS a waste, it is minimal. But considering the distance the hunter would have to travel to reach other herds, it is worth it to draw these guys in.
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Herds do move when you start encroacing on their territory.
But the fact that Hunters get gimped when you start building Cattle Barns, makes chasing them more work for your peeps.
Their production drops by almost 40% once you can get meat, hides and tallow from a barn.
You know, for ‘balance’.
Once this happens, then grouping Hunters, Barns and Smokers together is far more effective than trying to manage deer herds.
A single Root Cellar for the temp storage of Raw Meat and Raw Milk help keep these fast-spoiling items out of system.
Keeping raw meat out of the Shelter Stocking routine is more important than a few extra pieces of food they generate.
It also keeps Smokers working and not traveling, chasing raw meat all over the map.