[Norfleet]

Scouts also tend to allow you to diffuse your blood hunting across provinces: One advantage of this is that you don't actually have to drop taxes to absolutely zero, and therefore give up income entirely in what are otherwise good provinces: Successful blood hunts tend to produce a LOT more unrest than a failed one, particularly if the take is large: I've done a blood hunt with a blood-10 hunter, raking in some 20+ slaves at once, and immediately sending unrest into the 100+ range.

In contrast, scouts usually fail their hunts: The unrest is minimal and even a successful hunt will yield only a modest take that doesn't overly annoy the province. A province being hunted by scouts will therefore tend to average out to a smoother unrest generation, as opposed to a blood mage hunter's spikes of successes.

Plus, costwise, scouts are far, far cheaper, and can be built nearly anywhere, even many provinces which are devoid of fortresses. There are also other benefits of having scouts diffused throughout your empire: Should an enemy attack you, once his army rolls through, your scouts may be able to easily reflag the province and allow your defense force to totally annihilate the enemy force, since they will not have anywhere to rout. Only Mictlan really benefits from using actual blood mages with SDRs to hunt, since their blood hunter priest is a mere $80 and sacred, to boot. Other potential blood nations have hunters which are just too expensive to use for such a task.