Here's a good strategy for killing them without much danger, at least if you see them first. Place a wood frame on the ground and upgrade it twice. Then jump-place another on top of that and upgrade that twice too. Then you're standing on top of a two high platform. Agro the animal and then kill it at your leisure.
If you're jumped and have no guns to mow it down with quickly then look for a building to nerd pole up the side of. Jumping on the roof of a car can almost sometimes make them attack the side/trunk of it.... although sometimes they will run up the hood and you need to kill it before they make it explode so that should only be a very last resort. They also don't jump very well so you can sometimes use a picket fence to jump back and forth over which generally gives you enough time to reload a blunderbus while the animal tries to figure out how to get over it.