Here are some websites for you aspiring hunters out there:
Big Red Kitty - primarily beastmaster, and DPS pets, with how to videos and tutorials
Big Red Rhino - for hunters with “tanking” pets, showing some of the things a skillful player can do when he/she knows their stuff
TKA Something
Good Intentions
Petopia
And generally, the easiest way to tame, is to drop a freezing trap first (or have a friend drop one). It can save you a bit of a beating.
I managed to complete the beast training quest. Now I have a pet cougar named Attila 
Current frustration: While wandering around Mulgore near Thunder Bluff, I encountered that unique kodo bull whose name I can’t recall at the moment. I killed it easilyenough. Then, a couple hours later I got the quest from the high chieftain in TB to kill that same kodo and bring him his horn. Of course, now the damn thing just won’t show up. I’ve wandered all over in the same area and there’s no sign of him. I realize it’s just a random thing, though. He’ll show up eventually.
Meanwhile, I’m doing other quests. I’m at that first camp in The Barrens now, and my Tauren Hunter is at level 15. I find it curious that there don’t seem to be any 13th/14th/15th-level enemies for Tauren. They topped out at 12th level in Mulgore, as far as I could tell, and then jumped to 16+ as soon as I got to The Barrens. So trying to get from 12th level to 15th level was kind of aggravating. I wasn’t getting much XP from the monsters in Mulgore so I was going to need to kill hundreds of beasts to level up. And then the ones in The Barrens were almost too tough. Having the pet really helps, though. Attila and I managed to take down some 19th-level monsters all by ourselves. Later on a player with a 26th-level druid showed up and helped me out for a while until I finally had to log out and go to bed.
Arra’chea (the kodo you’re looking for) wanders around roughly southeast of Thunder Bluff. Hint: You’re a Hunter. Use your “Track Beasts” ability to look for him on the mini-map.
Oh, and as far as professions go, I’m having a lot of fun with the combo of Skinning & Leatherworking. I’m looking forward to learning how to make the larger bags. I can’t believe the price difference between a 6-slot bag and an 8-slot bag!
I do find it annoying, though, that I can’t skin a beast without completely looting its corpse first. It’s irritating when my pouches are full, and there’s one remaining item on a corpse, and there’s nothing in my pouches I want to drop to allow me to pick up that last item.
Yeah, I remembered where I encountered him the first time, and that’s where I’ve been looking. I think this one just requires patience. Kodos in general seem to show up fairly rarely anyway. Took me forever to acquire the three pieces of Thin Kodo Skin required to make a kodo skin bag.
Another Q: While playing the demo, one race in each faction was grayed out, as well as one of the classes. I assumed that once I’d installed the full retail version these races/class would become available. But they’re still grayed out.
What’s up with that? Are these races/class specific to the Wrath of the Lich King expansion or something?
There are actually two expansions to WoW, Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King. The two races (Blood Elves and Draenei (as well as a tradeskill, Jewelcrafting)) are only available to people who have Burning Crusade.
The grayed-out class is (I assume) Death Knight, which is WotLK specific.
Burning Crusade is totally worth getting if you enjoy the game, too. The Draenei and Blood Elves are both really neat races with really neat homes and really neat storylines. Lich King you can probably not worry about for a while, as I think buying the expansion only gives you access to high-end content, but Burning Crusade is definitely worth it.
Yes. I think the only thing you can’t do without WotLK is go to Northrend and be a Death Knight. The Inscription tradeskill was patched into the main game with the last patch and is available even if you don’t have Wrath.
That is the first quest hub in the Barrens you would find, coming from Mulgore, but it ain’t necessarily where you want to hunt. Run through that town, take a left at the first road intersection, and run up to Crossroads. You’ll find lower level mobs and quests more appropriate for your current level there.
Yeah, the first thing to remember is that The Barrens is BIG. I mean, BIIIIIG. There are 3 different flight points in that zone (2 Horde flight points at Camp Tauraje and Crossroads, and a neutral flight point in Ratchet). The first camp you come to after you get out of Mulgore is definitely in a higher-level area. Take Oakminster’s advice and get to Crossroads. It’s much more level-appropriate.
I got WotLK for this morning for Christmas! I made a Death Knight character ut haven’t played it yet. I’m trying to level my other characters a bit and make some gold. (Grrrr…I really want to take ot Stalvan Mismantle with my rogue but I need him to level one more step I think. I get close to winning battles with him, but not close enough. I need a few more hit points to last in the fight…and a healing potion I’m saving for it. ) I’m imagining that there will probably be a lot of new DK’s made today by other who got WotLK for Xmas.
Is Northrend lvl 55 and up or are there quests for lower levels there also? before I installed WotLK I tried to visit it with a lvl 37 Hunter. (I mistakenly thought the ship was going to Kalimdor at first) I got a message about not having WotLK installed and was transported back to Menethil Harbor.
I almost forgot, I meant to ask this in my last post. I was telling a friend about the time a year or 2 ago when some gold sellers hacked into WoW and made a bunch of toons jump from Ironforge I believe and spell out the URL or name or something of their site with the bodies. I can’t find a link to the article as I’ve forgotten what it was called. I saw a video of it once, too. Anyone able to point me to a link to that?
My buddy is thinking about getting WoW so we can quest together. It’ll be cool (we went to High School waaaaay back in the dark ages together.) and if he doesn’t get it for Xmas I can give him my trial code that came with WotLK so he can try it out.
Did you upgrade your account, too? If you haven’t gone in and upgraded your account the realm servers won’t recognize that you have WotLK installed.
Well, I did now, but if you read the part you quoted again, I said it was before the I installed WotLK.
:smack:
No worries, man. 
Yup, made that discovery shortly after I posted. I guess I’m just too accustomed to more linear games where the monsters level up in a nice neat progression as you move from one area to the next. Gotta get used to this wide-open business
OTOH, I discovered that as long as I didn’t get two of them on me at once, those big lvl 19-21 Stormsnouts weren’t too difficult to kill with the help of my cat.
Back in Mulgore, Arra’Chea still doesn’t want to show his ugly mug. I swear I spent a couple hours wandering around looking for him, but he made himself very scarce. It’s getting annoying, especially since the other beasts in that area are all little lvl 7-9 things and not worth killing except to skin them, unless a Kodo Matriarch happens to wander through, and even she’s only 12th lvl. It is kind of fun taking down an entire kodo herd, though. I’ve killed Ghost Howl twice in that area already.
BTW - I’ve been meaning to mention: is it just me, or does the male Tauren Hunter sound an awful lot like Michael Dorn? I need to look at the credits to see if I spot his name.
Did you get the quest involving him? I think if you right-click on his pelt, you can get a quest to talk to the tauren standing outside of the inn in Bloodhoof Village, who’ll give you XP and tell you to talk to the guy on Hunter Rise.
Arra’chea makes a big circle around the area to the east of Thunder Bluff.
It does if you’re coming to the Barrens from Durotar, the Orc/Troll starting area. Mulgore->Barrens is something of an oddity; most other places lead naturally into higher level areas. They do try to shuffle you off to the Crossroads as quickly as possible from Camp Taurajo.
Of course, once you get to the third tier area (roughly levels 20-30), then it starts opening up more and they connect directly to some dangerously high level areas.