Askiy Ridge Guide: Animals, Weapons and Whether to Buy It

Askiy Ridge is one of the few maps where the class column asks for a full set of ammunition. The wiki points out that it covers every class, which it calls rare, and it is tied with Revontuli Coast for the most species on any reserve. That breadth is lovely to read about, and it also means one rifle will not do the whole map.

The class column splits into three bands:

• Class 1: the seven birds, from the pheasant to the northern pintail. A shotgun covers this band, and one reviewer says there are too many birds on the map for their taste.
• Class 2 to 6: beaver, pronghorn, mountain goat, whitetail, bighorn sheep, mule deer, gray wolf and woodland caribou. This is exactly the range the included Laperriere Outrider .30-30 is rated for. The wiki is frank about it, though: a 75 meter range and a 4 round magazine make it play close to a shotgun, and it suggests the Frost .257 for more reach. One Steam reviewer calls the .30-30 really weak, while another says it is their favorite gun.
• Class 7 to 9: black bear and Manitoban elk at class 7, moose at class 8 and wood bison at class 9. These four need heavier ammunition than the .30-30 carries, so bring a rifle rated for them.

Gray wolves deserve a word of their own. The wolf is class 6 and has a Great One here, and the Steam reviews that mention wolves describe packs coming out of the woods at the player, so they are worth planning for rather than meeting by surprise.

Steam players are clearly positive on this one. Across all languages the add-on had 212 positive reviews out of 266 when I read them in October 2026, and in the 56 recent English reviews, 41 were positive.

The things people like:

• The scenery and the snow. This comes up more than anything else. Reviewers call it stunningly beautiful, the best snow map, and one jokes that you cannot play it because you keep stopping for screenshots. Another says it feels majestic in the way Yukon Valley does.
• A big, varied species list. Players keep naming the range, from ducks to deer to bison to beavers, and one reviewer who would start a new player on this map says it has about everything they could want: deer, moose, elk and wolves.
• Weather and tracks. The dynamic weather and the snow that holds tracks get regular praise. The store page notes the deep snow tracks can be switched on or off in the graphics settings.
• The beavers. Several reviews single out the beaver as a fun new hunt, and the store page pitches falling trees as the sign that a beaver is active nearby.

The complaints are worth reading closely before buying:

• The missions. This is the biggest split. One reviewer finished the 7 main missions in about four hours and found the story thin, another disliked the story enough to not recommend the map, and a third says the newer reserves' main missions could use more depth. Others enjoyed it, including a Cree-Metis Albertan reviewer who says the guide sounds like one of their aunties.
• Bugs. Reviewers report a main quest that would not progress, tracks and blood trails that glitch out under the snow, and crashes at the main lodge. One reviewer suggests bringing a bloodhound for the tracking problems.
• Render distance. Two reviews point out that the intro promises you can see game a kilometer away in the snow, while animals disappear at around 400 meters.
• More of the same. A long-time player who owns nearly every reserve says the maps are starting to feel alike, and another calls parts of it generic next to Medved-Taiga.

The stuck quest has a known way out. In the Steam bug report thread I read in full, several players say the main mission Snow Day would not complete after every task was done. A developer reply asked for save files, and on December 1, 2025 one player posted the advice support gave them: go back to the car in the mission and interact with its engine again. They say that fixed it.

Buy it if you want one reserve that gives you a bit of everything. Nineteen species across all nine classes, eight of them found nowhere else, and six Great One species is a nice balance. Revontuli Coast ties it on species but has two Great One species, and Tòrr nan Sithean matches its six Great Ones with 17 species. Our best theHunter: Call of the Wild maps table also has it as the best rated of the recent reserves, at 80% positive, which makes it the safest of the $11.99 add-ons.

Skip it, or wait for a sale, if you buy reserves mainly for the missions. The story is the part reviewers argue about most, and the Snow Day bug sits in the middle of it. Players with a long reserve collection already may also find it close to the snow maps they own.

If you skip it, the pillar table points to two cheaper snowy picks at $7.99 each. Yukon Valley is rated 85% positive and suits players who want scenery and big northern game, and one Askiy Ridge reviewer says fans of Yukon Valley or Medved-Taiga will like this one too. Medved-Taiga National Park is rated 81% positive and suits winter hunting on a shorter species list. For the best rated add-on overall, Emerald Coast still leads at 88% positive.

For me, the scenery praise and the sheer range of animals make this the snowy save I would come back to, with the mission bugs as the one stressful part to know about going in.