First off, why bother with gazs? They are a big micro-management pain in the butt. However, if you do the math you can see that a herd of gazs can get you ballpark 500-700F and once you practice the management isn't too bad. Additionally, I'm not sure of the exact collection rate, but the food seems to come in faster than with berries. Besides, if you get bad berries, pitting gaz's early on is a pretty viable option (especially if you can use the same pit for your woodies)
That being said, here are a review of the basics in gaz hunting:
1. Use many villies to kill the gaz. Hunters do 4P damage and gazs have 8HP so theoretically, 2 hunters should be able to do the job in one shot, but this is rarely if ever the case because gazs will leap & bound over your spears. I've found that a min of 3 villies works OK, but 4 is much better.
2. Kill all gaz's at once to prevent them from running away and drop a pit in the center of the carcasses much like you would for a berry patch.
3. Assign each hunter to a carcass. A good plan is to pull villies off the pit construction one at a time. That way the pit will be ready by the time the first hunter comes in with the meat and you don't have 5-6 villies standing around after the pit is constructed.
4. Hunting is generally best done in Stone/Tool. During Bronze you're spending most of your time managing military and farms are just that much easier. Another good time is when you are running away from an attack you can't beat and relocating. Usually you have many villies and need a food source (plus berries are usually gone by then)
With the basics covered, I've been debating some details. For example, I've tried this out and still haven't decided whether it is effective or not. If I see a herd of gazs conviently located to where I will pit my first forest, I'll send the 3-5 villies that will build the pit over to kill all the gaz's first and then build the pit. I'll still place the pit in the best place for the forest, but it will
have the food sorta nearby. I tried having those same villies chop up the meat, but I think that was stupid because I had a big lull in my wood production. Instead as my new-made villies came out I would send them onto the meat. Another option recomended to me is to pull villies from berry duty and put them on the hunt and replace your berry pickers with new-made villies. Of course this will only work if your berry operation and wood/gaz pit are close.
Now I know that this isn't real effecient because I am losing meat to decay, but on the other hand my woodies would have disturbed the gazs and it would have been a real pain to get them later. All in all, I think that it would be worth it.
Another suggestion that I have heard is to use a Tool Archer in your hunting party. I think that the idea has alot of merit for eles because they will kill villies (unlike gaz) and also have lots of HP so your archer isn't as likely to kill the ele. However, for gaz I think this just makes hunting more complex and if you do kill the gaz with your archer, well no food for you. Additionally, I tend to have my archers out killing enemy villies and not hanging around my base, so.....
There has also been a debate about using mass numbers of villies to hunt. Now this will depend somewhat on the number of gaz in th herd (I have seen some sweet herds of 10-15 gaz). Generally for a 5-6 herd I wil use 5-6 hunters. I know that I may lose 25% to decay using 1 villie per carcass rather than 2 or 3, but I also don't have to manage the hunters as much. If I put 10-12 hunters on the kill instead of 5-6 it's true that i will be much more efficent and also twice as fast, but I will also have to go back and check on those villies in half the time. A more skilled player can probably pull this off, but I always come back to find that my villies have been standing around wasting time. So I guess I sorta trade food efficency for management time.
Well that's my thoughts on hunting. I hope that I have inspired a few people to do a little hunting, because ever since I have been working on my hunting all I see now are tons and tons of gaz just waiting to be eaten.
As always, I would love to hear advice/feedback from all you experienced hunters out there, so post away.