Distinction between hunting and tracking

[Davos Flint]

Hey Mizahar I was just hoping to have something cleared up regarding the hunting and tracking.

Hunted is quoted as being - "Hunting is the pursuit and killing or capture of wild animals for food or sport. Hunting can also include people."

While tracking is - "Tracking is the skill of tracking wild game or people in different environments."

I'm just trying to get my head around the difference, could I effectively have the tracking and weapon skill to be classed as a hunter? Or does having the hunting skill alone allow you to track prey down and kill it providing you have weapon which sort of renders the tacking skill useless?

I'm guessing that this is actually just a simple confliction because they're both stubs and with the sheer amount potential skills it is understandable why, I'm just trying to figure out what skill would be the most useful skill to start off with so if anyone can clear it up I would be very thankful.

Thanks for reading

[Bat]

Hunting and Tracking are vastly different skills. Tracking is the art of looking at the signs around you, inferring meaning and figuring out where a specific target is. It is, in itself, a rather passive skill. Hunting, on the other hand, is the act of overcoming that target, be it by killing or capturing. In a single sentence, tracking is finding out where your target is, while hunting is what comes after you've discovered that location.

A hunter, rather than a tracker, must be able to infer not only physical meaning, but be able to predict the thoughts of the animal--which way will it run? How does it detect things? How can one avoid being detected? Where is the best position to attack from, and what type of attack is best?

A tracker, rather than a hunter, must work off what is already there--did the target stop here to eat the bark off a tree? How long did it take? Is it moving slower now that it's eaten? How fast was it going in the first place? How long ago were the tracks made? How far ahead is it?

If you're looking for a hunter character, I would suggest taking both, but put more skills in hunting than tracking or at the very least make them even. You must be able to track to find the animal you are looking for, but you must be able to hunt to bring it down. Someone with tracking skill and, say, skill with a shortbow will be able to find a deer, but without the hunting skill, they will not know where to place themselves, where to place their shot to make the kill quick and clean, so they will almost always alert the animal to their presence, shoot in the wrong place and lose both the deer and the arrow, and have no ability to see through the eyes of their prey and predict how they might react.