One of the only things I really miss during early game is the ability to go fishing and have more options to prepare fish.
The fishing could be done with nets and different tiers of fishing rods. There could be more varieties of fish that yield different types of meat.
To prepare meals there could be the options to make stews out of fresh fish and to smoke fish to make it last longer (as an alternative to curing).
One could also keep live fish in barrels for a while.
The mod "Primitive Survival" is a good example of how some of that could look ingame.