Your friend is probably not wrong in theory, but no ancient source I know of--and I'm a professor of classical Greek and Roman literature, so my knowledge is limited to early Europe and the Near East--mentions use of weapons for harassment and chase. From what I can tell, the goal was to minimize or control the direction of the chase as much as possible (as it is still today--unless you're one of the Benoits).
The earliest sources to discuss hunting (Xenophon's 'On Hunting'; Arrian's 'On Hunting'; and various discussions of Persian hunting in Xenophon and related authors who knew about at the Near East, which had one of the most sophisticated, early hunting cultures) suggest that the basic hunting tool kit consists of six 'weapons': dogs, nets, horses, clubs, spears, a professional hunter (the ancient Greek word for hunter means 'dog-driver'--essentially someone whose sole profession was to raise and train dogs and maintain nets for the rich men who could afford to hunt--horses were, of course, hugely expensive). And the animals they tend to hunt are (in order): rabbits, boar, lions, and deer. The strategy in all cases had to do with herding animals into an enclosed area, often using dogs and nets, to kill them. The point is basically to trap the animal and either club (rabbits) or spear it (boar and lions) to death.
Dear hunting was similar in some ways, but also quite different, and probably offensive to modern sensibilities. Two methods were recommended: either using dogs to herd the deer to an area in which hunters had buried caltrops, which would wound and hobble the deer, making it easier to hunt down; or catch a fawn and wait until its mother returns, and then spear them both. Not very fair, of course, but getting close enough to spear a deer must have been quite difficult.
As for basic ballistics, modern technologies are much, much more powerful and accurate than anything they had in antiquity.
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