Most predators are built for short bursts of speed so they can rush prey. Prey animals are a little slower but with better endurance so they can outlast that burst of speed. If a lion doesn’t catch a gazelle right away, then it will realize it’s hopeless and give up. The gazelle will also be alerted to the lion and will have demonstrated that it’s healthy and fit, so the lion will just look for easier prey. That’s the standard “meta.”

Persistence hunting is a niche that kinda “breaks the meta” by not caring about speed at all. You expect the prey to “get away” multiple times. You can’t really do this as a pure carnivore, but as an omnivore, you can gather food while in persuit (helps if you’re nomadic anyway). You also need to be able to have other ways to protect yourself from predators, since you have no chance of outrunning them. Early technology (like spears and fire) make the approach more viable, and those are human-exclusive.

If you drop your whole build to try to counter what humans are doing, you’re going to get eaten by a lion (if gazelle) or not catch anything (if lion). And persistence hunting gets fewer kills compared to pure carnivores so it’s not really worth it.