Get meat like boar.

[moonshield]

The real way to get skills is to find a clay pond and make tons of tea pots.
Building your own settlement helps too i guess.

What is a clay pond?

Normally, making clay wrecks the landscape, and even if you fix it, forest has become grassland. Other than that it's a great way for a beginner to get LP.

Is a clay pond possibly some type of place I haven't found, where one can repeatedly mine clay without changing the terrain? Or is it just a metaphor for an area people have messed up with digging clay?

Claypits/ponds give infinite clay and you find them in those "deserts".

[Raephire]

Stats don't mean a whole lot in terms of hunting . Not at lower levels anyhow - In order to hunt a boar, its safe to bring your melee or unarmed skill to 25, even with 10 of all stats, a boar is unlikely to hurt you very much if your skills levels are adequate.

[theTrav]

Sounds like you're stabbing yourself in the foot and then complaining that you can't run as fast as you used to...

People will trade baked goods for piglet sausages no problems, I certainly would. People will generally trade anything for anything if you give them an overwhelmingly good deal. two baskets of leather for a single sausage? HELL YES!

Try to keep in mind that it is not desirable to have everything available to every character, that's how economies are stimulated. Personally I'd be really happy if in the map reset, we had intelligence only available from fish (caught in the ocean) as opposed to from foxes as well, and mines only being profitable up in the mountains (far away from the oceans). That'd give you a reason for trade right there.