Why Hunter is a slog for Ironmen
Most people skip hunter or treat it like a side activity. The problem is that getting 99 takes roughly 70-80 million XP if you're efficient, and that's without the usual methods of using high-demand tradeable bait like shrimps to keep your inventory fed through the day. Ironmen can't trade, so every shrimp, butterfly net, and bird nest has to come out of your own pocket. The first time I tried hunting as an Ironman, I spent three solid weeks just grinding on crabs at Catherby because it was the only free method that didn't require buying anything from the GE. I learned quickly that's not scalable past level 50 or so. The standard answer that everyone lands on is bird nest farming using fruit trees planted near Varrock East bank or inside the player-owned farm patches if you've already got one. You level agriculture to grow the trees, plant them, and then harvest bird nests repeatedly. It gives roughly 65 XP per nest with the appropriate magic secateurs boost. You can pull about 1,100 nests per hour with perfect movement and no lag spikes. That works out to around 71,500 XP per hour, which is fast enough to hit 99 in roughly 1,000 to 1,100 hours depending on your movement efficiency and whether you count teleport downtime. Setting this up properly means you need level 50 Agriculture minimum to plant fruit trees, though the real target is 70 so you can access the higher-yield ones like pineapples and bananas if you want. The Varrock East plot works because the tree respawn time is short and the bank is two steps away. You run to the trees, harvest, drop the fruit (Ironmen can't sell it), run to bank, deposit, repeat. The bird nests stack and go straight into the bank when you run out of inventory space. You'll accumulate thousands of useless fruit over the process. Just drop it and move on. It's not worth the inventory space.
What actually happens when you try this
One thing nobody warns you about is the inventory management trap. You think you can just swing between bank and trees endlessly. The reality is that every trip you're carrying stacks of fruit that weigh nothing but still eat up inventory slots. I once ran into a situation where my movement got slower because I was micro-managing too many drops and the game started feeling sluggish. Not a lag issue, just mental fatigue from constant inventory juggling. The fix was simple: I stopped dropping fruit entirely and just banked the bird nests, leaving the fruit behind. Yes, you lose the fruit XP you'd get from planting and harvesting them again, but the time saved makes it worth it. The nests are the goal, not the fruit. Another detail that matters is the magic secateurs. Without them, your harvest speed drops noticeably. They cost around 1 million coins on the GE, which for an Ironman is a serious investment. I'd recommend saving up for them first before you even start counting hours. The bonus they give is flat percentage increase to nest drops, and at 99 hunter it compounds nicely. If you can't afford them yet, regular secateurs still work fine for the earlier levels.
The real pitfalls and when this method fails
Bird nest farming hits a wall at high hunter levels because the nest drop rate doesn't scale linearly. You'll find yourself putting in massive hours for diminishing returns as you approach 99. The method also completely falls apart if you have no way to access a player-owned farm. Without it, you're stuck at Varrock East, and the tree layout is cramped. Movement between trees gets inefficient. I spent an entire weekend trying to optimize my route and realized I was losing maybe 15 percent efficiency compared to someone with a properly placed farm patch. That's thousands of hours lost over the full training run. There's also the boredom factor, which sounds silly but is genuinely a bottleneck. You're doing the same four-second loop for potentially 1,000-plus hours. I recommend breaking it into sessions of 30 to 45 minutes, then switching to something else entirely. Your hands will thank you. Repetitive strain from mouse clicks is real, and taking breaks reduces the chance of developing tendonitis more than anyone on the forums will admit openly. If you want an alternative for the later levels where nest farming becomes inefficient, consider bulk butterfly hunting or barbarian fish catching. Neither is as XP-per-hour consistent, but they break up the monotony and don't require any special setup beyond a butterfly net and some bait. Some Ironmen also run monkey nuts method at high hunter, though that requires deforestation permissions and specific forest locations that aren't always available.
Get the Full Details
The bottom line is that hunter for Ironmen is less about raw efficiency and more about finding a method you can sustain without burning out. Bird nest farming at Varrock East is the most reliable starting point. Magic secateurs are mandatory before 70 hunter. Stop dropping fruit. Take breaks. And accept that 99 hunter as an Ironman is going to take longer than any other skill because the training options narrow significantly as you climb the levels.
