I only ask as last night I was hunting a lion, and was following it slowly for what was close to 45 minutes. Eventually I got to a track where it changed from a North/North East heading to a dead West heading. And any and all tracks just stopped. I searched the area around the last track for a good 15/20 minutes and there was absolutely nothing around in any direction from that one for a good 100-150m, neither me nor my friend who was playing found anything when searching that area.

So do animals just despawn after awhile? I was fairly close lot of the time as could hear the distant growls/roars of what I assume was the lion but to have it seemingly vanish into thin air is kind of disheartning if that is the case.