Shot review

Bullet camera before the score

The store copy still leads with the camera, not a points splash. You see the path, the speed, the angle, and where the bullet landed, which is the only official forensic tool besides the dog’s blood track. Use it on Headquarters’ range until the placement matches the animal you think you are shooting, then take it to New Laurentia timber where a moose quartering away will punish a lazy hold.

Procedural antlers mean two elk are not clones of a WOTH1 preset. That is a visual promise, not a scoring formula. No trophy-score equation appears here because the studio did not publish one. Non-typical still waits, so do not catalog rare racks as if 1.0 already shipped them.

Choke, pellet graph, and air sacs

Update 0.4.0 is the shotgun patch as well as the Headquarters patch. Tighter choke holds pattern farther; open choke spreads faster at short range. The claim screen then draws a pellet-spread graph so a turkey or duck kill is readable. Birds gained a dedicated air-sac organ on that same screen, which is why a mallard claim looks different after 0.4.0 than it did in early Early Access.

Primacy Long Range Choke is the named attachment. Merkel 45E and the Primacy pump are the named shotguns. Pair those rows with this chapter instead of pretending every shotgun in a competing game exists here. If you need night thermal for a second pass, that is ZEISS DTC or the Night Hunting Pack, not a shot-review setting.

After the claim: dog and hall

A poor placement becomes a blood-track job. A clean placement becomes a Headquarters mount. That is the whole loop. Co-op does not merge claim screens across platforms, and separate worlds mean your friend’s shot review is not your save. Mods will not add a custom camera.

Read updates if you want the 0.4.0 date in the timeline. Read gear if you want the choke and clip-on names. Read species if you need to know whether the animal even has an air sac because it is a bird. This chapter stays on the camera and the 0.4.0 claim-screen additions.

Practice on the range, then cash the claim

Headquarters exists so the first pellet graph is not a wasted buffalo. Pattern the Primacy pump and the Merkel 45E with tight and open choke until the claim screen matches what you saw in the field of view. Then take the same choke to turkey on New Laurentia or duck on either map. Air sacs on birds are a 0.4.0 organ, so a mallard claim reads differently than it did in March.

Rifle work still starts with the bullet camera. Speed and angle tell you whether you held on a quartering moose or panicked on a lion. Procedural antlers mean the hall will not fill with identical elk. Non-typical racks wait. The dog starts after the camera, not instead of it.

Co-op claims stay in that session’s world. Your solo moose file does not watch your friend’s camera. Mods will not add a slow-motion slider. Gear names the choke and clip-ons. Species names the bird that now has air sacs. Updates names 12 August 2026 as the patch that taught the claim screen to draw pellets.

Birds, pigs, and the 0.4.0 claim screen

Turkey, mallard, ptarmigan, ostrich, and yellow-billed duck are why air sacs exist. Warthog and wild boar are why a 12 gauge pump sits next to the Merkel 20 gauge. Pattern on the range, then hunt those names on the map that actually holds them: birds and boar on New Laurentia, ostrich, duck, and warthog on Kilimaya.

Pellet graphs do not replace rifle cameras. A moose still wants the bullet path. A lion still wants the bullet path. Shotguns got extra UI in August; rifles kept the camera they had in March. Procedural trophies fill the hall with variation. Non-typical still waits on the roadmap.

If a claim looks wrong, change choke or hold, not a hidden modifier. If a track starts, that is the dog chapter. If the head is ready, that is Headquarters. This chapter stays on camera, choke, pellets, air sacs, and procedural racks.

After a messy shotgun claim, change choke before you change maps. After a messy rifle claim, change hold before you change caliber. The camera is the teacher; the hall is just where the lesson hangs. Non-typical racks will wait until a later patch actually ships them.

Save a screenshot of a good camera in your head, then copy that hold on the next moose. The 1.0 teacher is the path of the bullet, not a points color. When the path is ugly, the hall should stay empty.

Copy the good path. Leave the bad one off the wall.

If the path is ugly, do not hang the head until the next shot is clean.