There was an earlier thread that claimed deer were suspiciously wary, and when running would start to zig-zag only if a bow is pointed at them. I remember being able to run up to a startled deer and just club it before H&H.

I hope AI is being mostly ignored while the devs work on the biomes. If they have their critters in clades, they should be able to tune them up at every level when they are polishing the game. According to their version numbers, with four biomes to go they think they are only 20% done, so they are leaving a lot of time for polish.