Tracking in Hunting Simulator 3 is a sign-based loop: find the tracks, read them for the species and the direction the animal went, then follow the trail until you have it in front of you. The dog is the quickest way to pick up the first sign, but you still have to read the track yourself before you move.
Hunting Simulator 3 how to track an animal: the full method
- Send the dog on Scout. It searches the surrounding area and stops at tracks, blood or carcasses — signs you would otherwise walk straight past.
- Read the dog's line. The direction the dog is pointing tells you which way the sign runs before you have even reached it.
- Inspect the track yourself. Use the Inspect action on the track to identify the animal and confirm its heading. The launch update added the ability to hold Inspect on a track, which lets you lock onto one specific animal instead of guessing which track belongs to which deer.
- Switch the dog to Track. Now it follows that specific scent trail rather than searching.
- Close the distance quietly. Move along the trail, and slow down as you get closer — you want the animal still in front of you when you arrive.
Skipping step three is the most common mistake. Without reading the track you are following a direction, not an animal, and a mixed herd leaves tracks from several animals in the same ground.
What a track does and does not tell you
A track gives you direction, and that is genuinely useful. It does not give you age or sex, and it does not tell you how big the animal was or how good its genetics are.
To learn age and quality you need the Field Journal and the age readout on a harvested animal. Harvest a few animals of the species and you will start to see how old the local ones get and what the potential readout looks like on a good one, which is what tells you whether a track is worth pushing.
Following a blood trail
If you have already wounded game, put the dog on Track and it will work the blood trail and close the distance on a wounded or running deer. This is the fastest way to find an animal you have already missed once, and it is why the Track command exists separately from Scout.
Two things to keep in mind while you work a blood trail: the animal is running and it is alert, so it will be more difficult to approach than an undisturbed one; and the trail tells you where the animal went, not that it is still there. Closing that last distance is a stealth problem as much as a tracking one, and the stealth guide covers the three channels that give your approach away.
When the trail goes cold
There are three common reasons a trail ends without a shot, and none of them are a mistake on your part:
- Predators took it. Predators are part of the same ecosystem and they hunt other animals, so a blood trail may not lead to the animal you shot.
- It aged out. An animal that ages out dies of natural causes and leaves a carcass that can no longer be harvested. A carcass in the field is not always a legal kill.
- You lost the scent. Wind, cover and a long chase all thin a trail. Going back to the last confirmed track and re-running the dog from there is usually faster than pushing forward.
Tools that make tracking faster
The dog is the main tool, and the whole command set is covered in the dog commands guide. Two other things shorten a track: knowing the need zones of the species, because animals move between them on a routine, and having glasses for the moment the trail finally opens out.
If you close the last stretch at speed and the animal bolts, the problem was usually the approach rather than the tracking. The stealth guide covers the visibility, noise and scent rules that decide whether you get a shot at all.