Smoothbores can be used very effectively for hunting but you have to know something about hunting to do so. The Pilgrims were religious separatists from the urban areas of England, they were ill prepared for a subsistence lifestyle in the new world. Farmers and their families would have likely had an easier time of it. The Pilgrims knew little of farming and essentially nothing about hunting, plus as mentioned they had ideas of operating as some sort of socialist commune and we all know how that inevitably works.
To the poster that asked about longbows vs. firearms, even the most primitive firearm was a monumental leap over the longbow. English longbows were effective at the time but firearms quickly displaced them. Longbows take a lifetime of training to employ effectively while a conscript soldier can quickly be trained to use a musket. Firearms vastly multiplied the lethality of armies at the time. Never take a knife to a gunfight as they say.
Wow.
Thanks for all the info.
I will investigate myself what animals would have been available to them in that area at that time, as I have no idea.