Ok, so I’ve been watching the leaderboards as I’ve mentioned before, trying to climb my way up many of them. Had been watching the animals killed one on hard, the record was 5866 for several months with no change, so I had some hope that I could surpass it. Was around 10th place for a good while now, slowly climbing legitimately, almost up to 4000 animals killed now. When suddenly, in the last week or two, I noticed a few players I hadn’t seen in the top 100 before had passed the 6000 mark (the original leader I had been observing is still at 5866 so must not be playing for now). Now, upon looking this morning, I see that someone has somehow gotten to over 21000! How is this even possible, I ask? Is there some exploit to cheat this number that I am not aware of? Or is this player just a natural born hunter beyond my wildest imagination and ambitions? Lol. Holy cow. If anyone knows a secret or has any input, I would much appreciate it. Seems like maybe killing the bosses counts as more than one animal? My hopes of toppling that one have obviously diminished a bit. Lol.
Also, in my current game, which is where most of my slaying has taken place, only shows about 400 kills when I look at the watch. I have played a bunch of other save files, but none to the extent of this one where I have literally set out to catch 40-60 small fish at a time to boost my numbers. So it seems like maybe the size of the meat collected is reflected differently on the global leaderboards than it is on the watch in-game. Also, playing on Xbox Series X. Not sure if the leaderboards are separated by platform, because it doesn’t say anywhere that I’ve noticed, but figured that may be the case. Finally took 9th place on most days survived on hard (without dying, I think is how that one is tracked), but still have a long road ahead to 1st place.
First of all, well done on your continued effort with the leaderboards. You can do it! 
Secondly, that jump is pretty big in numbers. I may not get a response from the team for a bit but I’ll check in with them to see if they would consider it suspicious too and if it is different values for bosses like you said that could be affecting it or is someone just really good at fishing haha. I’ll also ask them to confirm if the leaderboards are cross platform but as far as I can recall it’s separate leaderboards per system.
Thanks! I’m not trying to accuse anyone of cheating, just thinking perhaps they found an exploit that I’m not aware of. If so, I will attempt to use the same exploit with even more dedication lol. I appreciate you checking with the team about the potential variation in value by creature type, as I mentioned I think even my numbers have boosted more than I fished at some times. Though I’m not sure if it was from killing the bosses, or perhaps even joining other online games. I think this is one of the stats that tracks across all your gameplay with your profile, not just one particular game. Also maybe worth noting, I always play on hard difficulty (which is the leaderboard I’ve been tracking) but I think every random online game I’ve joined has been on normal difficulty. Wondering if it would track animals I kill as a guest in another game under the difficulty level of that game or my own? Lots of fine detail questions, I know. Thanks again for your help in investigating this!
I suspect it’s pretty easy to build this number up if you place a hundred or so fish traps, maybe give a dedicated save for this a try and see how it affects your score. I’d imagine you’d get a few hundred per day by literally just swimming around and collecting fresh from your traps.
And by day I mean in game time. Once setup is complete, I honestly think I could probably jump 20k in one day irl
This very well could be the case, I may have to try this once I top the most days survived. I could work on setting it up in the shallows in the meantime. How often do fish appear in the traps? Is it the same for bird traps? I haven’t experimented with traps much at all yet. I have been going about it slowly, so that I cook and eat every animal killed. Still worried about building up too much because of lag and disconnect issues. Should probably just plug in the wire and quit being lazy, though my wireless speeds are still about 200Mb/sec which is usually sufficient for most games. Don’t want to take a chance on messing up this save since I have gotten so far, somewhere around day 315 I think, hard permadeath. Thanks for the tips!
Holy cow! There’s pretty much no chance that I can top the animals killed or items crafted leaderboards anytime soon lol. Both have now increased beyond my wildest imagination. Over 211,000 items crafted?!? And over 45,000 animals killed?!? Bravo, indeed.
Wow, those are indeed some pretty high scores! I never did get a response from the team last time and seeing your comment reminded me so I’ll ping them again about the question regarding how it’s all calculated and see if I can get an answer (I know they’re busy but fingers crossed!).
Awesome thanks! I’m not worried about how long it takes, just put this question at the bottom of the list is perfectly fine with me lol. Certainly not too important, just curious. 
No worries - and sure I’m curious myself too haha 