Interesting question.
By 1460, farming and herding strategies were well established in Nubia and in the Gambia region of West Africa. Speaking of a "typical Bantu" is a bit tougher to generalize about. Since Bantu is a language family spoken over a large geographic area, it is important to note that different societies within the Bantu linguistic umbrella had different food strategies, based on the local environment and social customs. Farming certainly was part of that strategy, but it is a question of how much agriculture was relied on in comparison to cattle raising, fishing, or hunting strategies.
So, if we are to talk about a "typical Bantu, Nubian or Gambian", we can quickly conclude that hunting was not the most common occupation/food strategy.
That said, hunters do occupy a social significance in certain West African and Central African societies despite their rarity. In Mande oral traditions, the hunter-hero is a recurring trope, evoking an archetype of a self-reliant and driven adventurer who exists apart from society. In the epic of Sundiata, that hero is identified as a hunter, as is his most talented general Fakoli.^1
These Mande traditions also suggest that would-be nation builders like Sundiata relied on lodges of expert hunters to form the nucleus of their armies, and were important in the expansion of Malian trade and political control into the West African rainforest to the south of the Mandinka heartland.
In the savannas of Southern-Central Africa, we run into similar traditions which place hunters in the narrative role as kingdom founders and adventurers.^2
Specifically, among speakers of the Botatwe languages of south-eastern Zambia, subsistence strategies have relied on cereal cultivation and cattle-keeping since the second half of the first millenium AD. Despite this, finds of hippopotamus, elephant, and antelope remains as well as accounts from the early colonial era point to sophisticated communal hunting practices. Kathryn De Luna has suggested based on linguistic grounds that individual hunting talent enhanced a person's reputation and renown. Furthermore, she points to the growth of trade in Central Africa as a factor that opened up opportunities for hunters to explore new forms of elitism, because they were well placed to procure trade goods such as ivory, horn and hides.^3
Sorry, I can't speak specifically about the place of hunting in Nubia in this time period.
1 "The shirts that Mande hunters wear" by Patrick Mcnaughton. pdf warning.
2 Central Africa to 1870: Zambezia, Zaire and the South Atlantic by David Birmingham. pp 21.
3 "Hunting Reputations: Talent, Individuals and Community in Precolonila South Central Africa" by Kathryn M. DeLuna in The Journal of African History 53 (2012) pp. 279-299
