It shames me to note that I reached this decision mostly from having played D&D in my yoot. Stinging insect swarms were so hard to defend against that they almost amounted to a “Fuck You” from the DM.
Wouldn’t you be crushed by the 3.75 tons?
The hunter and rats are overwhelmingly favorite top draft picks. Crocs are last picked on the playground, which makes sense to me. They’d be the easiest to elude.
That just means the attacking animals failed to kill me. Win by technicality! 
If you added a legion of army ants to the choices, picking insects as your allies might be the way to go.
The problem with the hunter is that shotguns are only effective at 50-75 yards max. A grizzly bear or cape buffalo could close that distance is 3-5 seconds. This would only give the hunter 2 shots and I can lie down or hide behind a tree I can effective negate the hunter. The hawks could be defended against with a tennis racket or getting into a car or inside or a forest. The rats could be trampled if they massed or picked off one by one if they didn’t mass. Bears would easily kill wolves, or apes, and the buffalo would trample the crocodiles or kill the lions with its horns. Bears and Buffalos are best.
So, who has a copy of Ultimate Epic Battle Simulator handy to game these scenarios out with?
I disagree…depending on how this all starts. First off, it’s a shotgun, not a rifle, so range is limited. I made some additional assumptions based on the ‘hunter’ description that s/he would be using an actual hunting shotgun, not a military set up, and would be using buckshot or maybe slugs.
Obviously YMMV, but unless they are starting everyone off right next to each other (in which case you are probably dead regardless…if you are close enough for someone to shoot you with a shotgun you are close enough for any of the big predators to get you long before those rats could help) I really don’t think the hunter is going to be that much help. I’d rather have the (trained and motivated) hawks and rats than a guy with a shotgun.
I wonder how the OP is going to keep the lions and whatnot from attacking each other and the hunter though.
I do, but I can tell you without even running it the team currently winning the poll, Hunter + Rats (+ defenseless human), would also win the simulated battle, because in that program numbers always win. The two humans would definitely not survive, but there would be a few hundred rats left standing.
http://www.chuckhawks.com/shotgun_slugs.htm
For this discussion to go anywhere, we need to decide what kind of shotgun the hunter has and what kind(s) of ammo. There is a difference between using an exposed hammer double with a bead site and a modern autoloader with an electric dot site or ghost ring. Both would qualify as a hunter’s gun.
Likewise, we should decide exactly what terrain and distances are involved, otherwise it’s just going to be everybody bringing shit in that isn’t mentioned in the OP to favor their choices. If we can do that, I want it to take place in a modern football stadium and the hunter and I will just run into one of the locker rooms, closing the doors behind us. I will cower in the coach’s office while the hunter does his best to kill the animals if they make their way off the field.
Quietly and distantly at first, then building to deafening thunder, comes the skittering from the vents…
I think mixed terrain makes sense. I’m adding an island to my imagined scenario, to prevent me from hopping aboard my defensive lion and racing away from everyone except the hawks. No human habitation, because any human building becomes almost trivial to defend.
The rats are on my team, remember?
As for the hunter’s gear, I’m thinking a budget seems appropriate. Here’s my totally well-thought-out-and-not-at-all-pulled-out-of-my-ass figure: $120,000.
Here’s what I’m figuring: the hunter is a hunter for hire, right? And you want the best goddamned hunter you can get. So you’re paying that hunter $100,000 for a day’s incredibly-dangerous work.
And we’re gonna make that hunter comparable to getting four lions. I can’t find the cost of purchasing a lion, but we’re just planning on getting the lion in order to kill it, right?
Killing a lion can cost $55,000 apiece. Times four, that’s $220,000.
So, subtract the $100,000 we’re paying the really good hunter, and you get $120,000 for equipping the hunter.
I mean, c’mon, we’re gonna die anyway. What kind of ridiculous shotgun can this hunter get for six figures?
Oops–I did not remember. Good plan, then!
I like the budget idea quite a lot! I must think about spending…
The Man has tools & Brains, the Wolves have Teamwork.
All proven successes.
Not a thing I ever expected you to say.
I took the rats and gorillas, thinking I could send 2 or 3 of the gorillas after the hunter…an adult gorilla can cover about 10 yards in a second, so I figured they’d get to him. Of course, I was thinking a standard 12- or 20-gauge, so who knows…as everyone pointed out, lots of variables to figure out.
The rats seemed like such a no-brainer that I thought about where I’d land if it were, say, 4,000 rats. Much tougher.
If you’re looking for speed to neutralize the hunter quickly, the gorilla is near the bottom of the list. A lion can hit 50 mph, and wolves, cape buffalo, and grizzlies can all hit mid-30s. A gorilla can run 20-25 mph, about the same as a human.
I was thinking the gorilla might not go down on the first shot, though, but if it’s loaded with slugs instead of shot, yes it likely takes the gorilla down.
I’d have to go with the hunter and cape buffalo. The hunter and I would be riding two of them, the other 5 could block off the larger animals like the bears and lions long enough to shoot them. The rats couldn’t catch you if you just had the buffalo jog away. The two biggest dangers in this scenario are the wolves and hawks. Both of those groups you could not outrun/avoid, and are numerous enough some would get through any volley of shooting. Hopefully the buffalo could mostly block the wolves and hawks are not exactly first strike deadly to humans.
I think a bear and cape buffalo would be tougher than a gorilla to take down with a shotgun. A grizzly is roughly twice the weight of a gorilla, and a cape buffalo is four times.
But seeing Sasquatch’s idea to ride the buffalo, I’m liking that plan. I’d be tempted to ride the buffalo and have the bears as my second ally to tear everything else to shreds. My hesitation is the hawks - can the bears swat them out of the sky before being blinded? If not, I’m back to screwed.