Every follower I've ever had will equip a stupid hunting bow, even if they don't have one. Does anyone have any ideas on how to stop that from happening? I guess I could give them a script that unequips it and tells it not to re-equip, but I'd rather stop it from happening altogether.

There exists a quest called DialogueFollower. That quest provides the followers with the bow and 12 arrows each time they are recruited. Open that quest, select the the Quest Aliases tab, and have a closer look at the Follower alias.

There you will find an inventory list of the items, which you can edit.

Still, that is a huge record, and if you edit it, there is a very good chance that it conflicts with any other mod that attempts to do something with followers.

DOesn't matter to me if it conflicts, my mod is a stand-alone game separate from Skyrim. So...everything conflicts. Thanks!

I just thought of pointing out another thing:

Those bows and arrows are follower-specific and "un-playable", which is why you don't see them in a follower's inventory when trading items (and why you can't pick up any follower Iron Arrows from the ground). They are listed, however, if you use the "showinventory" console command.

Also, they are not removed when you dismiss a follower. As a result, each time you ask a follower to follow you, they get fresh copies that accumulate (and also reduce the follower's capacity as a pack mule). Therefore, assuming that you remove them as items from the quest alias, your saved follower may still have, lets say, half a dozen copies already in inventory, and you might not notice an immediate difference, unless you make sure that your follower has none to begin with.

The USKP modifies the follower Hunting Bow to be playable. That allows you to trade any copies away from your follower, freeing him or her to equip any other bow that you might wish to provide.