[merak]

They wouldn't spear it. Mammoth hunts were organized and they followed herds. They killed them by digging trapps- and hearding them off cliffs. They had camps nearby to process the meat and store the excess in storage pits. Hunting smaller and faster game that don't heard in great numbers (like deer) would not have been done and most likely wasn't done until the mega fauna had been hunted out.

Sorry, that simply isn't believable. Even bison are significantly easier to kill than a mammoth would be, and there was never a shortage of them. You'd have to come up with some motive for hunting mammoths other than food.

[Burkeman1]

More calories per kill and less expended per kill. Mammoth hunting was a way of life well documented from the Ukraine to central Russian to Siberia and then to the Americas and the extinction from each area follows the human path. Mammoths were dead in Siberia before they died out in the "new world". Bison are faster and offer less meat than a Mammoth. And in an age when you are lucky to live to 30- I think humans were far more attuned to what was easier to kill and what would offer them the most chance for survival. In fact- Mammoth mass hunt sites are older than bison mass hunt sites.