Hi Terry,
I think that you raise a lot of valid points, and I wont try to argue against them because I think they are mostly correct. I appreciate that you raise them as well, because that gives me an opportunity to respond and tell you about my research.
There is actually a very specific set of questions that I am trying to answer, and for those specific questions I think that asking primitive archers about their hunts actually will work. Most of my work, and that of my advisers is done with people who are currently hunting and gathering, or were up until the last decade or so, and those are the people we look at when answering questions about how a person behaves when trying to feed their family. Unfortunately, there are very few hunter gatherers who still extensively use traditional technology (because lets face it, guns are easier, and if I want to feed my family I will do what is easiest), and those that do are so protected that I cannot legally get access to study them, even as a university affiliated anthropologist.
What I hope to learn from modern hunters with traditional technology is not how well they could feed their families, or really anything about them. I am actually trying to learn how the animals respond to hunters, and how/if their responses and characteristics can be used to predict which animals would be easier/harder to kill for a skilled hunter with a bow. By knowing the size of the animal and how long it takes to kill on average with a given technology and technique, we can begin to predict an average return rate for that species. We then can combine this with archaeological data on technology, techniques, and species abundances in history and try to make inferences about which animals in that environment would be most profitable. If we know which characteristics affect an animals return rate, we can then begin to infer return rates for animals which haven't been hunted in recent history.
I think you are definitely right though. There are significant limitations to what we can infer from modern hunters, but in my field we have to do the best we can with what is available.
Thanks for the insight Terry!
Best,
Andrew
