If you are on one of the buffaloes then you can outrun most of the rest of the critters. The gorillas and crocs will fall behind quickly, as will the bears and the rats. The hunter can take out the lions and wolves that the other 5 buffalo don’t stomp into the earth. After a mile or so, just have 3 of the buffalo form a close circle around/over you as you sit on the ground. The hunter can then pot-shot the hawks easily. They’ll be attacking you, not him. Give him a Siaga with unlimited 30 round drums and the skies will be quickly clean. Then mount up and ride away.
Now that you mention it, I’m liking the idea of riding the buffaloes, too. They can’t outrun everything, but even against the things they can’t outrun, they’ll still keep the distance open for longer, and distance is the hunter’s friend. The hawks are still problematic: The top speed of any land animal won’t make much of a difference versus a hawk. But at least we won’t have anything else catching up to us while we’re busy birdshotting.
Hawks to fly me away to a safe place, and the hunter to give me time, and also to not shoot me as I am flown away.
I pick the 10,000 rats, not because of their usefulness (although I’m sure they’re good for attacking the enemy,) but rather, because I don’t want them to be ***my ***enemy. It would be all but impossible to take them out all at once if they attacked simultaneously, even if one had a machine gun and unlimited ammo.
And then I take the hunter with the shotgun, too.
Depends on if we’re talking rifled slugs, buck, heavy, or bird shot. Its one of the reasons all these years after the Brown Bess that most military forces have some sort of “smooth-bore musket” in their inventory.
Twenty grand for ammo? Heck, I can add flechettes for that! 
Trust me ----------- since that comes close to my actual ammo budget a year or three when I was shooting competition --------- you can do a LOT of interesting things and never bother breaking out the reloading press.
My friend, you misunderstand me. The $120,000 is what you have left after you pay the hunter. Four lions, times $55,000 each, is nearly a quarter mil.
My question is, what’s the most ridiculous shotgun w/ accessories we can get this dude for that price? Are there “shotguns” that fire explosive rounds? Grenade-launcher shotguns?
I have extensive experiences with firearms, all from first-person shooters and the Punisher series on Netflix, so I’m sure my understanding is 100% realistic, but it’s barely possible one of y’all knows even more than I do about the subject, and I welcome your expertise.
There are a few full-auto shotguns out there. Ordinarily, they’re a solution in search of a problem, but 10,000 rats all trying to kill you at once (or 50 hawks or whatever else you didn’t claim on your side) probably is a good use for one.
How about hawks and buffalos?
One buffalo to ride away on, six to ram/trample animals trying to kill you, hawks to fuck over the hunter with, then blind/harass animals trying to kill you? I doubt a hunter could take down fifty hawks dive bombing for his eyes. They have amazing eyesight and reach speeds faster than 100mph diving. And there’s fifty of them!
I’m assuming, since the hunter has unlimited shots, that defending animals will be under your basic command somehow and that attackers will try to kill you, unless attacked. The scenario ends when you die.
The obvious answer is hunter plus buffaloes.
Seriously guys, cape buffaloes will absolutely and literally stomp all the other large creatures to death, especially at the numbers ratios postulated. Only the bears come close, and you get 7 buffaloes for the price of 3 bears. No contest.
It seems to me that there are a couple of equivalence classes here.
1: hunter
2: large tough animals
3: hawks
4: rats
In equivalence class 2, the buffaloes are clearly and far away the best choice. So your only question is if you want to choose from class 2.
The buffaloes might not be able to “fight” 10,000 rats, but they can run away from them, and rats can’t run fast. Any concentration of rats can be avoided, dispersed rats can be stomped.
The hawks are just way too fragile. And the hunter is clearly the best defender against the hawks, that’s what birdshot is for.
The only question is if you want to take rats plus buffalo instead of hunter plus buffalo. The rats are clearly the best attacker against the hunter, since he just can’t shoot enough of them no matter how many rounds he has. But the buffalo are the second best against him. One buffalo is a match for a single hunter with a shotgun loaded with slugs, against a herd of 7 buffalo the hunter has no chance.
So then the question is, do you need the hunter against the hawks, or the rats? The hawks are useless against the rats, sure they can kill a couple, but one strike and the rats swarm the helpless hawk on the ground. Dead hawks. Then again, shotgun. Tough choice.
Once again, distance and terrain? Is there water? Since there are crocodiles, I assume there must be. Forest? Open fields? The terrain has to make at least an attempt to include area that mimics the natural habitat of all the animals…they evolved to function in that habitat. Further,that allows you, as the target, to add map exploits to your attempt at survival.
I wish there was an option to pick Fiona the hippo.
Obviously terrain has to be an island, where you’ve been invited by an eccentric millionaire for a most amusing spectacle that he’ll explain later.
The island has jungle, beach, mangrove swamps, a coral reef, some thorny scrubland, and of course a volcano in the middle with some ankle-breaking rock fields. Pretty standard stuff.
Mixed terrain with the chance to do some escape and evasion is a whole lot more interesting than just some simple thunderdome with the target dumped into an arena and mobbed by the animals.
If we add mixed terrain, some of the animals become a whole lot more effective. If there is a lake full of crocodiles, and you choose them as defenders, taking refuge in the lake is going to make the lions, bears, buffalo, wolves, etc. a whole lot less scary. They aren’t adapted to operate in water, for the most part, and the crocs don’t have to tear them apart. They just have to drown them. Crocs are pretty good at that. That leaves the rats and the hawks. The hunter can work on clearing the skies. How effective do you suppose the rats would be in aquatic combat?
I think you have to pick the rats. The combined forces of all remaining creatures couldn’t hold back more than of the 9,000 rats before the remaining 1,000 chew off your face. To those who suggested that the hawks may do damage to the rats: The hawks are only going to take out 1-2 rats per strike, and after they make the strike they are going to be on the ground and be smothered by rats. Drop the number of rats to say 1,000 and you might have something comparable to the other opponents.
I went with the hunter next, based on the fact that he could probably take out the other animals while they were distracted by the rats. From a defensive standpoint I think the Shotgun is going to do better than the rifle. Unless he’s got a lot of range on the opponents he is going to have to be firing as fast as possible without much aiming. Also, if all he’s got is a rifle, you will have no defense against the hawks.
I think we may be giving the rats too much credit. In less enlightened times, it was considered good fun to drop a dog, typically a terrier, into a pit with great numbers of rats and place wagers on the outcome. The bets weren’t on whether the dog would survive. The bets centered around how fast the dog would kill ALL the rats. Dogs were expected to kill their weight in rats pretty quickly. Maybe the wolves are more of a defense against the rats than we think.
I remain unconvinced, with my own caveats. Obviously, somehow these are trained animals…otherwise none of this will really work. Assuming they are trained and can do even rudimentary coordination, and assuming that we aren’t talking about starting off with everything right next to each other but having some sort of distance and at least some terrain features (rocks, trees, maybe rivers, fields, etc) I think the best mix is hawks and rats. Yes, a single hawk isn’t going to take out a buffalo…but a team of hawks distracting a buffalo such that a few hundred rats can attack it? I think that would be indefensible. Same goes for the hunter. A distraction from hawks with an attack from rats would be something no guy with a shotgun is going to be able to deal with…hawks aren’t dove and they aren’t like other game birds, they attack totally differently and I doubt many hunters have ever hunted them or would know what to do with several of them diving right at him, talons out and aimed at his eyes and coming in at 50+ miles per hour. 10,000 rats is just going to be devastating, and we are talking 50 hawks while the numbers of the other animals are fairly small. Assuming you have room to maneuver, room to run, hide or gain protection (such as a tree or large rock you can get on), and assuming coordination but not really fine coordination (i.e. if you can have your large animals in some sort of formation and able to really coordinate together and maneuver together), I think you could defeat everything in detail. Plus, I know how to use a shot gun, so once my rats and hawks do their thing I’m armed anyway. 
ETA: wrote the previous post before I read that riding the buffalo might be an option. I may have to rethink.
A hunter with a shotgun riding a buffalo may be able to stay ahead of and whittle down the rodent hoard.
Look at your own cite…they are talking about a hundred and 20 rats (and no hawk or anything else support and in a confined area). I figure the rats would attack in packs of 1000. Plan to loose a hundred or more in each attack. They don’t have to kill the other animals either…just disable them such that they aren’t a main threat anymore. Eyes (go for the eyes, Boo!) would be what I’d have them go for. Same with the hawks.
Did you read all of the cite? The dogs basically herd the rats and kill an individual with every bite. If the rats were confined with the dog, then the reverse is also true. Yet, somehow, the dog being brought down by the rats didn’t happen often enough to be worth much mention. I think too many participants in this thread, including me, were too much influenced by “Willard” and other shitty horror movies. Are there any real world examples of large healthy animals being brought low by swarms of rats?