Hi,
so since animal AI is being prioritized, I was thinking of ideas on how to make hunting viable without some sort of AI abuse. Even now, if you hunt without using any tricks/abuses, it'll most likely get you killed since you can't fight these animals back, so hunting becomes useless for less developed characters. Ideally, hunting with the new animal AI would not be so gated by your stats, but would still require effort. For this to work we would need Tracking and Trapping.
Tracking
Once you hit an animal with an arrow they should run away (like they already do). Then you would have a skill called Tracking, which would tell you what general direction the animal went in. Once you finally track it down, you can shoot once more and the animal (if not yet killed) runs away again, same if you miss. Then you would have to track again.
Trapping
Simply put, make buildable traps that you can place on ground. Make them have their own inventory, just like the fireplace does. There you would be able to put different forageables/bait that would attract different animals in a certain radius. So for example putting in rabbit meat would attract foxes, and putting in chantrelles or carrots would attract rabbits. Once the animal triggers the trap, it would be stuck there for example 12 hour to 1 day. It would be alive so you would have to arrow it down, since it can fight back in melee range.
Quite possible that this was suggested already (at least in previous forum), but whatever. I feel like something has to be done with hunting as well, once the new animal AI is in.