2017 was the peak of bounty hungting and most of the bounty there was paid and the reward was really big compared to thousand of bounties these days. Although still there was some scam projects and didn't make it from ICO to the exchanges but still you got decent rewards from there, compared to today it's really sad.
That's right. Many bounties are profitable before, because the rewards given to hunters had value after getting listed on exchanges. Yes there are also scam projects, but plenty of those are not scam, the reason why joining in bounties before are worth it even it takes months before you can receive your rewards and enjoy the earnings after selling.
Bounty hunters can't be recognized as investors because you don't invest anything(money) into the projects. That's the core key of investment, if you pay something to buy some assets for hoping to get some bigger return then that's called investment.
Well, hunters didn't invest money but they exert an effort to get paid. Investors and bounty hunters are different but when it comes to patience there's a similarity since both needs to become patient to gain.