Relatively new player to PZ here, but I am with Sir Twiggy here (Wait a second, you killed Dogmeat ? You monster !). Be it in Romero / Brooks / Kirkman lore, zombies are a manageable threat and presented as such. You can easily outsmart them, outdistance them and even fight them effectively using old style formation tactics. The ultimate demise of survivors in most of their work are: panic, denial, other humans, lack of resource or false sense of security. Well, a zombie apocalypse isn't exactly realistic in the first place: there's no such thing as a realistic zombie behaviour because they're a purely fictional creation. We can discuss preferences, not realism. And distracting zombies to another location while other survivors get away or using their lack of intelligence to keep them in safe spots is actually done in quite a number of movies/comics/books. If the the zombies are able to follow you faster to the forest or building you want to use to break line of sight, wouldn't the whole kiting process be faster ? You'd simply have to change your kiting behavior: take your first shot from a little more distance, run away, shoot again not necessarily aiming at the zombies so that you don't have to walk backward. It seems even worse if you give them a longer memory: shoot once, run until you can "disappear" from their sight and watch them as they wander miles away from the location you wanted them to be away from. Kiting "short term memory" Zs actually keeps you close to them, which is more accident prone in my opinion.