Most any small automotive starter is going to draw 75-150 amps just free spinning off the car with no load on it.The question was what was the
"approximate maximum amps draw a starter has when cranking over a high-compression stroker motor". My dodge dakota with a stock 4.7 and a 750 cca battery draws almost 500 amps @11v. Maybe once the engine starts turning over and the resistance has dropped it might be half of that.They don't spec out 4&2 gauge cables and 800 cca batteries to supply a 100-200 amps to your starter.The reason the amp draw is so high is to over come the intial resistance due to weight of the internal components(ie,pistons & crank) and the external components(ie flywheel and or torque converter)and acc(belt tension on acc,ps,waterpump ac compressor). Worn internal components and acc components can add to the intial high amp draw also.
Small gear reduction starter can draw approximatly the same amperage as a larger starter but are more efficent with the power that they consume.For example most of your older gear reduction and direct drive starter use a lot of energy just spinning the armature up to cranking speed due to its larger mass.Modern starter,called pmgr use rare earth magnets fields instead of copper wrapped coils. The fact is that it take the same amount of amperage to create the same amout of power whether it is a gear reduction or a direct drive starter. It called Ohms Law.What you get with a smaller gear redution starter is just that, a smaller starter to fit in tighter places.Jason