I do not have a lot of "anti-venom" and it is taking me more then 1 shot to kill them. So I get stung, many multiples of times. If I wait too long to use my few anti-venoms, I'm dead. If I use them too quickly, I run out and I am dead. I have not, but should I realize, played with the survival craft of making meds.

Basically, I need to get my speech up for a certain quest, so I thought, "Hey! I have this nifty quest to check out Vault 22." Well... I head over that way. I come across a little shack that some guy was making beer in. I get through (after 3-4 re-loads) the first wave of Cazador bugs. I explore the shack and find a really nice gun (Gauss Rifle). I sleep there to recover and then head out again.

Holy crap! The whole little "valley" is littered with Cazador hives. I hit another wave and get through them (another 3-5 reloads) and then see a couple of red lines on my HUD just over a hill. Well, Dynamite worked a bit for some of the others, until they saw me and came zipping. Ummm... those TWO red marks became 6 or more. Totally out of anti-venoms now, I have basically hooked up an IV with my stims: Fire 2 shots with the Gauss, hit 4 stims. Fire 2 shots with the Gauss, hit 3 stims.

There must be something I am missing with these "little buggers." That -40 poison kills me even if I win! What is really bad is that I S-U-C-K at shooting them. I would generously guess maybe 2 shots out of 5 hit the target as I back up firing. I just reached level 14, so maybe this is a "Come back later" quest?

Man, I sure do biotch and moan here, don't I?

Impact-detonating explosives or full-auto weapons. If VATSing, go for the wings. Cripple their mobility, and they become a turkey shoot. Ideally, a grenade rifle/launcher/APW is what you want; it's much harder for them to dodge splash damage.. Not sure if they set off proximity-detonated explosives, and timed-fuse explosives take too long to pop.

A Gauss is one of the the absolute worst weapons to use against Cazas, for it shoots and reloads too slowly, and is too precise. It's great against the other wasteland terror, the Deathclaw, because they move slowly enough where you can get a good bead on their head, but against flitty things like Cazas, you want to paint broader strokes.

Survival of 30, Buffalo Gourd Seeds, Surgical Tubing. Cazadores become an annoyance swatted with Love and Hate.

Flamers, Shotguns, Hollow Point Ammo, Multiplas Rifle, A 25mm Grenade APW.

Walk to the right of the Hillside, 3 Fiends are easier than Waves of Cazadores.

Do not try using Hand to Hand on Cazadores until Your character is equipped with a variety of Chems, but it is fun to clean out that area without wasting Ammunition.

EDIT At least You did not fast Travel to a "cleared" Location, get swarmed and have the Game equip the worst possible Ammo, with just two rounds in a Minigun.

They are tough, but there's things you can do about them. First of all, those are good creatures to be using Hollow Point bullets on. They have no armour at all, so they'll take more damage with that ammo type and go down quicker, meaning you're going to be less likely to get damaged. Also, once you get your Survival skill up to 30, you can craft Snakebite Tourniquets. These will automatically get used as soon as you've been poisoned, you don't have to do anything with them yourself. And as well as curing you of the poison, you also get a resistance against it for a short time so you're less likely to get affected the next time you get hit. You might also want to consider the kind of weapon you're using. I'm not sure how the Gauss rifle works, but I'm guessing it's a relatively slow weapon. You want to use something against Cazadors that fires fairly quickly. If you're using Energy weapons, a Laser RCW (or is it an RWC?) might work better. It's the Energy equivalent of a machine gun, capable of firing rapid bursts rather than just a single shot. Semi-automatics like the Service Rifle/Marksman Carbine work well against them as well. I'm currently using the unique version of the Marksman Carbine, and when using Hollow Point ammo with that, the Cazadores go down pretty quickly.

Urgh... snakebite tourniquets. Survival cheese.

A valid point, though. I just have a beef with the Survival skill in general because it's the developers' pet skill, to the detriment of Science and even more so to Medicine.

The Gauss Rifle is way too slow to be using against cazadors. You really want something that can spray a lot of lead really fast when you go up against a swarm of them. My favorite weapon to use against them is the Assault Carbine loaded with hollow point ammunition, though shotguns work pretty well against them too. If you're using VATS at some distance, target their wings; they're large and fairly easy to hit, and crippling the wings slows them way down.

Great points and ideas! Thanks.

Yes, my Gauss seemed to fire/re-load/fire/re-load. I did finally switch to my 10mm sub-machine gun to get as far as I did. Good point about the wings. Their mobility seems to be the worst part, aside from their venom

The ammo I have not figured out how to switch yet. I do have some hollow point ammo, but I'll have to see if I have the right stuff for the guns I have . Looks like a quick trip back to Novac to do some "tinkering" and then forward again. I want to beat these little buggers! (As opposed to meeting the Fiends.)

Thanks again. You folks are great

The numeric 2 key is hard coded to switch ammo types in your currently equipped weapon. Just press 2 repeatedly to cycle through the various ammo types you have in your inventory (ideally you want to have your preferred type ready to go before battle, though, as the reload animation will play whenever you switch). Your HUD will show you the type you have currently loaded, right next to your weapon condition bar.

Something else to keep in mind with cazadors if you use companions who favor melee or unarmed attacks; if you play in hardcoe mode, companions will die, and if you let them charge into a swarm of cazadors to punch them to death (Veronica loves to do this) they usually won't survive unless you use mods that allow you to give them antivenom or use it if you place it in their inventories. If you don't use these mods, it's best to switch your companions over to ranged attacks when fighting cazadors.

Believe it or not, in the game patched to the latest version, cazadors are nerfed from what they were in the initial release.

I hate cazadors as well. They are always buzzing and being evil nasty things. Anyways, as MadCat221 said, just use explosives or automatics, or carry around Snakebite tourniquets.

No one mentioning to shoot the antenna? Shooting in the antenna can cause one to frenzy, then it will attack its buddies. Whilst this is happening, try and frenzy another, and then another, so you don't have to do the hard work. Then once you're down to one or a couple, cripple their wings as MadCat mentioned to make them easy to back peddle from and kill.

Though a lot of people have advised against the gauss rifle, I find it doesn't really matter what you use so long as you can easily get a frenzy in (on one of my characters, I was using the holorifle - which has a similar rate of fire). If you're not opposed to using drugs Jet for more AP and Steady can help get antenna shots inside VATS. Further if you have Turbo it's easy to back pedal and shoot at them in the process outside of VATS - where potentially it's better to just shoot at the wings to slow the whole swarm down and make it more manageable.