On a more philosophical note, this is a game that revolves around hunting. They pretty clearly rolled this out to add an extra dimension to hunting that could benefit everyone (and not just one profession, as a spell release would have done). That wasn't a bad judgement call.
Plus, this isn't a combat system. It's a fluff system with one combat "integration". I doubt this took a ton of a combat Dev GMs time (though that's just a guess).
It's okay to say that the implementation of the system isn't what you would have preferred, but it wasn't a bad call to roll out a system that gives more dimension to combat that anyone can benefit from.