Help Spawning Animals, How to Navigate

[papercrane1001]

Hello!  I am trying to make a mod that adds a bunch of new mortar shells and shell types.  I've successfully done several, but I'm a bit stuck at the moment.  I want to spawn a manhunter animal (or several) at the point of impact, and while I know where to put my code, I don't know how to spawn the animals.  My best guess is to extend the CompProperties_SpawnerPawn class or create an instance of the CompSpawnerPawn class, but I don't really see my way forward. 
How the thing?

Also, how would I go about figuring this out for myself?  I tried simple googling and searching this forum, but didn't find anything particularly useful.  This is on the easy end of the ideas I've had; I can only imagine that it's going to get harder to find answers from here.