I swear by animal tracker early game -- you can track chickens and rabbits and snakes from a distance even if you didn't know they were there, and kill them before they ever become alert to you.
My brother never used it prior to my playing with him. Meat was something he always had to be conservative with; all of a sudden we had a box full of meat in the base and he was willing to make a pile of grilled meat at the drop of a hat. Everywhere we went I would suddenly hunker down for a moment and then kill a cutesy wootsy bunny wabbit or a plump feathery chicken out amoung the grass that he didn't even know was there.