Sons of the Forest Taught Me the Joy of Hunting with Grenades

When it comes to Sons of the Forest, Kelvin is its greatest gift to the world, but grenade hunting is absolutely its second. Yes, you can go to the trouble of crafting animal traps, carving a bow and arrow, if that’s your thing. But true hunters hurl an explosive device into a forest, collecting up whatever’s left after smoke has cleared.

Things didn’t start out quite that dramatically. I’d barely given a second thought to the grenades that were conveniently located at my crash site. I’d gone through every other unopened suitcase, shoving everything I could find into my physics-defying backpack. MRE meals? Check. Tarp? Check. Horribly dry, milk-free cereal? In you go.

I pocketed the grenades almost on autopilot, mildly disgruntled that I hadn’t found a firearm amongst the wreckage. What kind of security / mercenary team goes into action without an assault rifle each or, at the very least, a pistol or two to hand? But no, I was out of luck.

It wasn’t until later when, tired of flailing around in a nearby pond to catch fish, I got the idea to toss in a grenade. A few seconds and one satisfying explosion later, I was looking at some very vertical, very dead fish. I don’t think Kelvin approved, but we ate well that night.

However, that was just the start of an explosive addiction that, in the short term at least, replaced any desire I had to track down the billionaire or even my fellow mercenaries. What’s that, Zeta Team? Mutants are eating your face off? Well, I’m sorry, but I’ve just discovered the best possible way to hunt. If I’ve got any free time I’ll come around and help draw your faces back on.

And I do mean hunt — throwing grenades into ponds was just the beginning. I can’t honestly say what movie or show inspired me to start exploding fish. But when it came to hunting, I was putting Monty Python’s Mosquito Hunters to shame — minus the rocket launcher anyway.

As a skilled Sons of the Forest player, I’d like to reveal that I’d uncovered a vast cache of grenades, hidden in a cave underground. But what I was actually doing was loading and reloading the game, using the same four grenades again and again, juggling it with a “proper” playthrough. But the sheer chaos was worth it.

Sure, Sons of the Forest is still in early access, but the game wasn’t particularly prepared for my explosive shenanigans. My first attempt at hunting a deer ended in its demise, as you might expect. But the force from the explosion transported it inside a solid rock wall, with just one twitching, glitching paw in view.

My next few attempts at exploding Sons of the Forest’s wildlife were more successful, though it was a little less bloody than I anticipated. On the one hand, it meant I could still skin deer. But on the other hand, I was cruelly deprived of the rain of giblets I’d been anticipating.

Maybe I should file a bug report with developer Endnight Games, demanding they address this shocking, shocking oversight. On the bright side, explosions are capable of taking out not just animals but trees as well. I can still remember watching in awe as, narrowly missing my prey, I heard a crack as three trees simultaneously fell to the ground.

Do I feel guilty for my unorthodox hunting methods? Maybe, a little. In real life I’d be too intent on hugging a deer to even consider blowing it up. But there was something about Sons of the Forest’s island playground, alongside the lack of consequences, that sent me down a dark path.

Eventually, I came to realize that, as wonderful as grenade hunting is in Sons of the Forest, I had to stop. Was it remorse? Had I finally come to my senses, understanding the horrors I was inflicting upon Bambi and his friends? Maybe I’d realized I was there to find a missing family, that it was about time to pick up my mission and act like a soldier?

Not really. You see, I’ve found all these blocks of C4, and there has to be a detonator hiding somewhere…