Replace Rancho's Whitetails with Coues Deer

[tropic schooner]

This might be a radical idea, but just hear me out on this one. I think we have plenty of maps with Whitetail Deer now. We have six maps to hunt this species, and I think a lot of people are getting tired of constantly getting new maps with Whitetail Deer on them. What might help to alleviate the Whitetail fatigue would be to change the Whitetails on Rancho to be a separate subspecies from normal Whitetails: the Coues Deer.

You may be wondering, "well what are Coues Deer"?
Also known as the “Gray Ghost”, the Coues Deer is a highly sought-after subspecies of the Whitetail Deer that inhabits North America’s deserts. It is smaller and generally considered to be much more challenging to hunt than other Whitetails. Their racks are smaller with slightly more mass than other Whitetails, their coat is generally a more grayish color, and they are more skittish. This is one of Mexico’s most well known game animals, and I think many people who hunt in real life would appreciate it if they were added.

I'll explain why I think this is a good idea in more detail in the forum thread associated with this topic.

Now you may be wondering, "but why should they add Coues Deer"?
Well for starters, Rancho Del Arroyo is situated in the perfect location to include them. Coues Deer specifically inhabit Northern Mexico, southern Arizona, and southwestern New Mexico. Rancho Del Arroyo is located in Northern Mexico, and is clearly based on the Sonoran Desert region, which is one of the regions that the Coues Deer inhabits in real life. Location-wise, they would fit perfectly there, not to mention that most of Rancho Del Arroyo is mountainous desert country that looks exactly like prime Coues Deer habitat.

So really, why not add Coues Deer? They’re clearly different from other populations of Whitetail Deer, and they’d fit perfectly on Rancho Del Arroyo. What’s more, it really doesn’t make sense to have the same standard Whitetail Deer (which are present on so many other maps) inhabiting a Mexican desert that’s in prime Coues Deer country. Having the unique Coues Deer roaming in their natural habitat would make for a much more immersive hunting experience on Rancho, especially if they were more skittish and challenging to hunt than the ordinary Whitetail Deer in the game. This experience would be a great way to bring people back to Rancho, including players who may have become bored of this map at this point.

[opal breach]

Aren't gray ghost just small white tail

[tropic schooner]

They're a smaller subspecies with a few notable differences, like I said in my original post

[red badger]

Coues Deer are a subspecies of whitetail. And yeah that’s literally what the OP was saying

[opal breach]

The would be cool to have 3 species that only way I know they exist was because of meat eater

[red badger]

An artist I follow on Instagram actually illustrated the differences between the different whitetail subspecies. The Coues deer is second from the right whilst the current whitetail we have is either the leftmost one (northern WT) or second from left (Texas WT)

[opal breach]

What is the small one

[red badger]

Key Deer

[tropic schooner]

Yeah, that shows that there's a pretty noticeable difference between Coues Deer and most other whitetail subspecies.

[opal breach]

If looks like musk deer 🤣

[red badger]

Would be cool if there was noticeable difference between whitetail on different reserves tbh

[opal breach]

I want non typical but I guess the great one is none typical

[tropic schooner]

It would be interesting, even if the models were just slightly bigger. Maybe a Whitetail on New England would be larger in terms of body size than one on Mississippi for example.

[opal breach]

I just watched a video of key deer thare adorable I want one

[red badger]

I based a species of deer in my fantasy project off of key deer and mule deer I think they’re friggin adorable

[opal breach]

Do you think my mom will say yes if I asked to get one the only problem we can't keep farm animals in were we live

[red badger]

I don’t think key deer are domesticated. Correct me if I’m wrong here

[opal breach]

Well people keep deer for deer farm it sounds pretty fun

[tropic schooner]

I don't think they are. They're wild in the islands off the coast of Southern Florida.

[red badger]

Yeah. I’m unsure if they’re kept on high fence reserves the same way WT are or whether they can be kept in deer farms?

[opal breach]

I know it about deer but I would be happy for a farm map with snow

[red badger]

High fence reserves are a very controversial topic. I, for one, would love to see one so we could get species that normally you wouldn’t see in the wild together in one place. However, not everyone feels that way

[tropic schooner]

Anyway, getting back on topic, my original suggestion was for the Coues Deer specifically to replace the standard Whitetails on Rancho, which I think is the best way to include Coues Deer in the game.

Some people will inevitably argue that removing Whitetails from Rancho in favor of Coues Deer would ruin people’s Great One grinds, but I disagree. We now have so many other maps with Whitetails that it wouldn’t make a big difference. We have five Whitetail maps now, do we really need to have ordinary Whitetails on Rancho? Wouldn't it make more sense to have Coues Deer on Rancho instead? I think it would.

[red badger]

As for the original suggestion, I would like to see Texas whitetail be the replacement instead. It wouldn’t be too drastic of a change and I feel it’s a nice inbetween with what you’re suggesting and what we have now
For Coues deer, I’d say leave it for a new reserve. It’s much too small to serve as a replacement to a larger animal. That’d be like replacing a red deer with sika on Hirschfelden. Though I’d absolutely love to see Coues deer be added to the game

[tropic schooner]

Eh, I don't really think that we're going to get another map where Coues Deer would fit in all that well, unless we get an Arizona map. I don't see an Arizona map being added though since it's still very close to where Rancho is.

Plus, people generally hunt Coues Deer with the same calibers that they use for ordinary Whitetail, so it's not like Coues Deer would be a lower weapon class, which Sika Deer on Hirschfelden would be.

But that's just my opinion.

[red badger]

I want to see more subspecies of animals regardless lol

[tropic schooner]

fair enough. I just think that Coues Deer on Rancho could be sort of like Blacktail Deer on Layton. Layton has Blacktail depicted as a separate species from the Mule Deer, which are on other maps, even though Blacktails are just a subspecies of Mule Deer. I think Coues Deer on Rancho could be the equivalent of that, but for Rancho.

Are Coues Deer similar to the other subspecies of Whitetail Deer? Sure, but Roosevelt Elk are very similar to Rocky Mountain Elk, Green Winged Teal are similar to Eurasian Teal, and Feral Pigs are similar to Wild Boars. All of those species are in the game now and manage to all have noticeable differences from their look-alikes, so who’s to say that Coues Deer and Whitetail Deer should be any different?

[tepid fulcrum]

it baby

[opal breach]

Aw 😍

[tropic schooner]

Here's a picture of a coues deer buck

[opal breach]

Chunky boi

[tropic schooner]

and another one - you can probably see why they're called the "gray ghost"

[opal breach]

Do I have to hunt them

[tropic schooner]

(btw, all pics are from google images, they belong to their respective owners)

[opal breach]

Thare beauty is true breathe taking

[amber gale]

I like the idea of the added diversity, but some people might not be enthusiastic about losing a Great One on a map.

[lavish linden]

Sorta like @amber gale says. I think it would have been a good idea with the Coues Deer, if we didn't have Whitetail Great Ones on the map allready.
Would it be too much to have the Coues along side Mule and White, on Rancho?

[proud radish]

This might also be radical but if we do replace White-tail with the Coue’s Deer lets also replace the Bighorn with their desert dwelling subspecies

[cunning cliff]

I'm all for this as long as they make the models and behavior different from regular Whitetail .... I understand Coues deer also don't drink as often as regular WT because they have adapted to getting most of their fluids through plants . So would need to have a reduced drink time ....

so make them smaller, decrease drink times and increase feed times. This should add to the differences in hunting this sub-species

[unreal wagon]

If you added a completely new species to this map add the ringtail.

But yes. Cous deer would be a good addition to this map. The weight only gets up to 125/150 lbs.

[tropic schooner]

I think that would be a good idea too

[opal breach]

Since we're talking about backfilling I want greater Kudo on vurhonga

[red badger]

Greater Kudu are more or less confirmed by now. Whether they will be new map + backfill or just backfill is up in the air

[opal breach]

I want to kill my favorite animal with bow because it's expensive in irl but the map only cost like 6$

[tepid fulcrum]

Lmfao

[opal breach]

It's true

[tepid fulcrum]

The only reason I bought that map and was excited to hunt on it was because I thought when I read kudu it was greater Kudu they are one of my favorite animals on Earth

[sweet adder]

i love this idea! i live in AZ where to hunt “normal” whitetail i have to go to our farm in MN, which is a lot, and couse deer are an amazing and challenging hunt and would be a good addition

[tropic schooner]

been a while so I thought I should maybe bump this back up

[brisk gazelle]

i fully agree and the same should be done for the mule deer

as someone from the southwest imo this should’ve been done since the maps release. desert bighorn, desert mule deer, and coues deer are so vastly different than their northern relatives that for me despite rancho’s terrain being so accurate, the species fully ruin the immersion for me 😦

[tight turtle]

And Bighorn!

I think Coues Deer should maybe be class 3

[brisk gazelle]

meh because people usually use whitetail calibers on them irl but it could still work

[tight turtle]

I’d also want .308 to be dropped down to 3 (not to say it won’t have enough power to take class 6-8’s ) because people use Whitetail Calibers on axis deer,speaking of Axis deer they should be a bit taller than whitetail.

Similar to how to .44 is 3/8 but has plenty of power to go around.

[brisk gazelle]

that could work but 7mm08 and 30-06 are both very popular deer calibers and i don’t think they should all be dropped to 3-8

[tight turtle]

Add a grain system,Lower grain lower class,higher grain higher class

[brisk gazelle]

this should’ve been in the game forever ago lol

[tight turtle]

Maybe even a slider to get exactly how much power vs what you want to kill as well

[brisk gazelle]

well a slider isn’t rlly realistic, it should just be bullet grains and have each weapon have 2-3

[tight turtle]

That was my original thought.I wanted to give some choice,You can probably add just the right amount of powder that you’d want.

[brisk gazelle]

idk if they would add that much detail especially bc i feel like ppl that don’t have that much of an understanding of guns irl wouldn’t grasp the concept but idk

[gritty elbow]

Yea It doesn't quite feel right hunting the exact same animal in like 3 different reserves when they wouldn't look they same irl

[amber ruin]

bump

[tropic schooner]

Here's another picture of a Coues Deer

[tropic schooner]

it's been a while so I'm bumping this again. Was just playing on Rancho and thinking about how cool it would be to have Coues Deer on the map

[tight turtle]

It would way more fun with Coues Deer on Rancho,they are literally known as desert ghosts,could you imagine how hard but also rewarding with no hud,no spotting outline! Cmon EW!

[tropic schooner]

Wouldn't Rancho be so much more interesting with these special deer roaming around the desert and dry grasslands of the map? I think so.

[tropic schooner]

Since this is an animal I really hope to be able to hunt IRL someday, it would be awesome to be able to hunt them in COTW

[brisk gazelle]

Returning to this after my first coues deer hunt irl, they definitely need to be added as they’re a totally different animal than northern whitetails

[tropic schooner]

why would they? they can still hunt the generic Whitetail on Layton, NEM, Revontuli, and Mississippi, all of which fit the ordinary whitetails better. Rancho isn't even the easiest map to hunt whitetails, Revontuli and Layton are both arguably much easier maps for hunting them.

[tight turtle]

Not only that,Rancho is far better set up for Coues Deer,with tons of low to the ground-shrubby hills,prime habitat and what you’d hunt them in.

So,it sounds like you’d be angry not everyone else???

[tropic schooner]

yeah, the Coues Deer would fit in all of the different environments on Rancho while ordinary Whitetails feel totally out of place

[tight turtle]

I think you’d be the only one that would be so upset that you resent their addition..

[tropic schooner]

ok but how many people play Rancho specifically for that reason? I really don't think it's the main reason why people buy the map, at least not anymore. Maybe some people might have bought it for that purpose when it first came out, but we have so many more Whitetail maps now that people who want to buy a Whitetail map have plenty of other options.

Rancho has barely any species on it that are exclusive to it anymore. Bighorn, Mule Deer, Whitetail, Coyote, Collared Peccary, basically all the big interesting species on it are now on at least one or two other maps. I think a lot more people would enjoy the map if it had at least one more unique species on it. Coues Deer are by far the most popular of the potential options. I seriously doubt that the majority of people would be angry about getting a new species just because it means that an old species that is already on a plethora of maps would now be on one less map.

I think the number of upvotes this post has gotten indicates a large number of people would like to see Coues Deer enough that they're willing to see Whitetails be on one less map.

[dull socket]

This and Aoudad https://discord.com/channels/393040947006406657/1189384430054297790

[spice mesa]

It would be great if someone created a thread about Subspecies, so we can focus all the comparisons of each species there, the Coues, Desert Bighorn, and I would also like to add the Puma

and if possible we would have a backfill of new animals with minimal effort and with geographic accuracy xD

[tight turtle]

I think if they change “Puma” to “Andean Puma” while giving it a slight change in appearance it’ll be ok.

[dull socket]

Bump

[lucid compass]

Yep, we need the desert ghosts I was suprised they weren't added when rancho first came out. Also Audads would be cool in rancho.

[tropic schooner]

I was too, and yeah Aoudad (also known as Barbary Sheep) would be a neat addition as well. I'm not sure exactly how extensive the range for Aoudad is in Mexico, but if there's a population close to where Rancho is meant to be located (the map seems to be based in Northern Sonora) then I would definitely support adding them there.

[tropic schooner]

Did some quick research and it seems like Aoudad have a very restricted range in Mexico, their range is a lot more extensive in Texas and New Mexico. As such, I'd prefer it if the Aoudad were saved for a map based in West Texas or New Mexico since they're more common in those regions and it just makes more sense.

[tight turtle]

My Ultimate Rancho Backfill would be:
——————————————
•Plains Bison
•Mountain Lion
•Coues Deer
•American Badger
•Gray Fox

Fowl
White-wing Dove
Mourning Dove
Gamble’s Quail
Northern Shoveler
Northern Pintail

[tropic schooner]

I like it, although I would also like to see the ordinary Bighorn Sheep on the map get changed to Desert Bighorn Sheep (not sure if that counts as a backfill though). At some point, maybe I'll go and make a "How to Improve Rancho Del Arroyo" suggestion.

[tight turtle]

I think that would be a model change,rename.

[tropic schooner]

that makes more sense.

[tepid fulcrum]

Morning dove on rancho Mississippi and new England is a dream having that nostalgic sounds as a mating call while hunting would be a dream come true

[lucid compass]

@tropic schooner I made a whole post about the sheep, https://discord.com/channels/393040947006406657/1177764786566594581 it mentions the desert sheep and such

[tropic schooner]

thanks

[lucid compass]

bump

[tropic schooner]

bump. Let's try to get this post to 70 upvotes!

[lucid compass]

bump

[undone drum]

I’d Prefer White-Winged Doves On Rancho Over Mourning Doves.

[tropic schooner]

Why not both?

[undone drum]

I Guess It Could Be Both.

[tropic schooner]

been a little while so I'm bumping this one back up again

[inland widget]

Good idea for a bit more diversity. Would give a new lease of life for rancho too

[lucid compass]

I wish they had just done coues deer, i know it was a new map with whitetails, but now we have enough, and i feel rancho isn't appreciated as much anymore, from my pov at least

[warped stirrup]

Yeah and moose

[undone drum]

Moose Subspecies Are A MUST.

[lucid compass]

Bump

[stoic granite]

I think EVERY DLC MAP SHOULD HAVE AT LEAST 2 UNIQUE SPECIES.

Otherwise wtf are we paying for. NEM. Rancho. Legit no reason to own the two. Without Musk deer MedVed is legit useless unless you're HM moose or something. We should get completely new stuff if we buy a new map. At least a couple no other map has.

[lucid compass]

I fully agree

[candid wind]

^

[lucid compass]

https://discord.com/channels/393040947006406657/1250195761061167185 I made a post about this too

[tropic schooner]

Bump

[pure talon]

100

[verbal relic]

yess

[tropic schooner]

it's been a while, so I'm bumping this back up once again. Rancho still feels weird with the same whitetail that are on New England, Layton, Revontuli etc.

[verbal relic]

bump

[tropic schooner]

Coues Deer would be so cool to hunt on Rancho

I found this article online detailing a Coues Deer hunt in Mexico. I thought it was really interesting because the landscape you see in the images is nearly identical to the scenery on RDA in Call of the Wild.
https://brittlongoria.com/blog/2022/coues-deer-in-old-mexico-by-brittany-hosmer-longoria

[static kelp]

Any love to rancho especially coues deer is very needed I'd love to see this happen

[tropic schooner]

bump for Coues Deer

[verbal relic]

Bump

[tropic schooner]

Alberta has some of the biggest Whitetail Deer in the world. It would be really weird if the Whitetails on the Alberta map are the same size as the ones on Rancho, which should be MUCH smaller.

[verbal relic]

Bump

[tropic schooner]

yeah Rancho really needs this

[verbal relic]

True

[tropic schooner]

bump again

[lucid compass]

Probably a small Diamond or big Gold