Yeah but you want to know why I don't use pf? because hth are throw away characters. Half the time they die before they get in range and it takes a lot of punches to kill someone. It's not worth the time invested to gear up and I don't have bases next to every town, not to mention hh is mainly used for pve. So long killing bos since you'll die when reloading/running out of ammo. Only reason unarmed is viable is because of HH, and due to whiners it no longer will be.
I just tested it with a character similar to your Zombies. Killed a 500 HP BoS in PA with one MPF.
Yes, you might run out of ammo (if you get lucky you don't), but you can still manage to switch to 2nd hand and finish BoS off
(tried that too, it's doable). Remember this is one of the strongest NPCs in the game, so what exactly do you expect?
That you will just easily punch them with bare fists with no risk involved whatsoever?
You can still farm them alone with a HH character, just not a bare handed one.