Every dog order in Hunting Simulator 3 goes through the command wheel, and that wheel is the single most important control for using the dog. There are five commands: Scout, Track, Stay, Retrieve and Bay. The standard hunt is a loop through the first four of them, ending with Bay when the animal is in front of you.
Hunting Simulator 3 dog commands: the five orders
| Command | What it does | When to use it |
|---|---|---|
| Scout | Searches the surrounding area for signs | When you have no trail to follow |
| Track | Follows a specific scent trail, including a blood trail | After you have wounded an animal, or once you have picked a sign |
| Stay | Holds the dog in position | While you set up an approach or wait for a called animal |
| Retrieve | Recovers harvested small game | After a successful small game shot |
| Bay | Puts the dog on a live animal | When the animal is in front of you and you have a clear angle |
The wheel is available at any moment, so you are never locked into an order that has stopped being useful.
The standard loop, step by step
- Scout. Send the dog out to find a sign when you have no trail. It stops at tracks, blood or carcasses.
- Inspect the track yourself. The dog's line tells you the direction; the Inspect action on the track confirms the species and the heading.
- Track. Switch the dog onto that specific scent trail.
- Stay. Hold the dog while you take your position and wait for the animal to come to you.
- Bay. Put it on the live animal to open the shooting window.
Running the loop in that order matters. Baying before you have scent, or tracking before you have confirmed the animal, are the two ways this goes wrong.
No Scent Detected for Bay: what to do
Baying requires scent. If the dog has not picked up a suitable scent, the game answers with a No Scent Detected for Bay message.
Repeating the same command from the same spot will not fix it. What does work:
- Move closer carefully, so the dog gets a chance to pick the scent up.
- Investigate nearby tracks, blood or droppings, which usually means the animal has been there recently.
- Find the trail first, then come back to the bay.
A dog that will not bay is telling you something useful — most often that the animal has moved on, or that the wind is wrong.
Holding Inspect on a track
The launch update added the ability to hold the inspect button on a track, so you can follow one specific animal instead of guessing which track belongs to which deer. In a mixed herd this is the difference between walking to the right animal and walking into the group it left behind.
Once you have locked onto the right animal, the tracking guide covers how to work the sign and what to do when the trail goes cold.
Breeds you can try this with
The demo lets you try the whole loop with either a Retriever or a Hound, and the full game has three confirmed breeds with different strengths — a retrieval specialist, a baying specialist and a keen-nosed tracker. The dog breeds guide covers which is which and how to get each one.