Having just picked this game up, I'd say the real issue with hunting is just that blood loss/exhaustion doesn't exist without a mod, and certain small animals have too much health. Like, there is no way on earth that a raccoon should be able to survive ANY spear throw, period. It's just not big enough, it would be like you surviving a small-medium sized log through the torso and fleeing. If it was a rare thing it would be fine but every time is a bit nuts.
For larger animals, the lower initial hit damage would make sense if they took blood loss (leaving a trail) and slowly lost their ability to flee over time, perhaps counterbalanced with a further initial run distance so the hunting is more like "Find animal, throw spear/shoot, track over long distance to its hiding spot, finish off" instead of "Find animal, shoot, track for 40 blocks, shoot, track for 40 blocks... repeat until dead". This could also put some more room between spears and bows if done the right way.
Luckily there are mods to do most of this but I think it would be a good change for vanilla. Maybe with the status effects update, whenever that happens.
