I'm Horrible at Hunting Beavers

Are those arms or nipples?

So I've been adventuring in the fictional American West of 1911, playing the hell out of  Red Dead Redemption, and it's a great game, but I've got myself into a bit of a situation:

I've met a man in Mexico who wants beaver pelts. Why does he want beaver pelts? To build a da Vinci flying machine, of course.

And once his beaver glider is finished he's going to take it and leap off of a cliff, most likely to his death, and I want to be there when it happens.

So now I'm up in the mountains, hunting beavers.

And I'm terrible at it.





The first thing you have to know about beavers is that they don't act like normal animals.

Normal wildlife, like foxes and rabbits, will run away when they catch sight of an enormous stallion and an armed cowboy charging through the countryside. Normal wildlife has a straight-forward survival instinct. Once they smell trouble, they run away (and when they're moving around like that they're much easier to spot and shoot).

But beavers are clever. Beavers keep a cool head under pressure.
When a beaver hears me coming, most of the time, they don't move at all. You think this would make them easier targets but remember that these guys are in a forest hidden under grass taller than they are.

Honestly, I never spot the little bastards unless they're underneath my hooves.

And for the longest time, when I did locate a beaver and take a shot, they'd go ninja on me and just disappear. I'm serious. They'd just vanish.

The beavers weren't actually ninjas, though. It turns out you shouldn't kill a small animal with a high-powered buffalo rifle. I was hitting the beavers so hard that the game's physics goofed up and shot the beavers right through the game world.

After that, I switched to pistols and my hunting became a slow but reliably steady process. There was just one other problem:

Bears.

Fucking bears. They're like big, furry nightmares. The first time I turned around and saw one of these guys charging me I almost lost control of my bowels. I'm not kidding. They're honestly terrifying in a way that shouldn't be possible in a digital medium.

I'm pretty sure that if I turned around in real life and saw a grizzly charging me I wouldn't be half as scared as I have been by Red Dead grizzlies.

So once I collect my wits I shoot the monster, skin it, and guess what? Another grizzly is coming right at me. You'd think the second one would be easier, but no. My guard is down and I'm not scanning for alpha predators anymore. How could there be another grizzly just as murderous as the last one right in the same area?

So I shoot this grizzly, skin it, and guess what? Yeah, that's right. Another angry grizzly hungry for blood.

And then there was another grizzly. And another! It was a grizzly Zerg rush.

I don't know what forest god I angered to bring down this level of wrath or how many grizzlies can exist in a single ecosystem but what followed was an epic ursine massacre. By the time I wised up and rode off on my horse I had enough bear pelts to carpet a two-story house.


Red Dead Redemption taught me a valuable lesson. I will never, ever go camping unless I bring a buffalo rifle, perfect aim, and the ability to slow down time.