The real unbalanced part is that in many cases you can pick herbs while remaining mounted, which you cant do with either skinning or mining without an expensive consumable in limited locations.
Besides the xp is great for alts. I leveled this hunter from just into 112 to 80% into 118 by flying around picking flowers (ok, the associated herbalism quests too). Would have done it all the way to 120 except I wanted to hit the last TW weekend.