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[Albedo]

Depends on how friendly the environment is, and that changes over time.

In a normal map, it's fine for the first few seasons - hell, I even disarm them and let them build their wrestling up, then only an axe - especially if they become V. Agiile or better.

But once ambushes start, as suggested above, the clock is ticking for a lone hunter.  No matter how good their weapon/skill, sooner or later (and usually much sooner) it's just not good enough.

[HammerHand]

My problem with hunting was never the sieges or the vicious "wildlife" they would try to hunt.  It was something mentioned only in passing earlier:  Wildlife respawn rate.

Eventually, I didn't have any fortress wildlife.  They ran out.  There were no more mountain goats grazing on my mountain's slopes, no macaques playing out in the jungle trees.  There was only the hunter, lazing about my fortress, secure in the knowledge that he had hunted every single local species into extinction.  Kind of like my fisherdwarf, who had fished all the ponds and rivers dry.

I immediately thought:  "Well, if it's not a renewable food resource, why the hell should I worry about it?"

Also, it tends to cause problems when I want my hunter to do something else (I usually have them set to a few other, rarely-used labors), but they're so stuck in their "Hunt" routine that they won't stop stalking that deer halfway across the map to come back inside and carve a few bone trinkets.  >.<  They're just stuck in this loop of "Sneak, spotted by deer, deer runs away, pursue.  Sneak.  Spotted by deer.  Deer runs away.  Pursue.  Sneak.  Spotted by deer...."  This loop is especially true if you decide you want to train a NEW hunter.  I wouldn't bother with that.

But I still like to start a Dwarf out with Ambush as their highest skill.  Free leather armor, quiver of bolts, and crossbow for the win.

[Vester]

Steel bolts, no less. If you ever needed to kill a creature 10 tiles away, Steel bolts are the best way to do it.

[Simmura McCrea]

Given enough hunters, it is possible to empty a map of wildlife. Then you can just arm everyone and give them all copper or bronze armour, while you keep the steel for your military.

[SquirrelWizard]

I fine that if you want to get a consistant supply of meat, you are generally better suited by breeding animals rather than hunting. As previously stated, hunting is a short term fix. You kill the critters on the map, get some meat/bones/leather what have you, and then the critters are gone. Unless you need the food immediately i'd advocate setting up cage traps to capture the critters and then tame/breed/butcher them. Not only does this provide more meat in the long run, but it also serves as an early ambush warning system, depending on how you set up the cage traps.

[Skorpion]

Given enough hunters, it is possible to empty a map of wildlife. Then you can just arm everyone and give them all copper or bronze armour, while you keep the steel for your military.

Copper or bronze?

I'm on a map without above-ground trees. I need all the copper and bronze I can get for making barrels and bins. I'm giving EVERYONE steel armour, since I struck, mined, and smelted out a cluster of magnetite a while ago, and all the masterwork and exceptional steel armour attracts rich seams of goblinite.
I'm still sitting on 300-odd bars of iron and 200-odd of steel. Pig iron and steel bars on repeat, with the odd additional steel job to even things out and prevent pig iron moods.
The merchants now bring me almost nothing but logs. I get 3-400 in a year, and pretty much all of them go straight to charcoal.

My megaproject other than the magma moat is having everyone in high-quality steel plate.
Should any migratory wildlife show up, it'll be in for a nasty shock

[Trowzers]

When a fortress is large and relatively secure, seeing how well the N00b hunter goes (and if not, setting up his tomb) can help keep things interesting.  It's also helping me keep the local populations of crocodiles and alligators to a managable level so they don't bother my dwarves.
I tend to train hunters up a little as marksdwarves, and then toughen them up with mining or some other task first so they don't die straight away (especially as they'll mostly be hunting elephants, alligators, crocodiles or giant tigers in my current fortress - and even a superdwarvenly tough noob hunter can take an awfully long time to bring down an elephant especially when he's trying to wrestle it next to the carp infested river)

[Albedo]

Letting a hunter use an axe (or even wrestle, if it's not a dangerous map) makes them chase their prey longer- and trains up "hunting" quickly. (And wrestling, if that's chosen - axedwarf tends to be quick.) And no/low-skill archers don't waste bolts.

Depends on what you have to spare, and what you want out of the arrangement.

[Vester]

Last time I let a hunter wrestle, he got his lungs stomped out.

By a horse.

Both of them.

[Shurhaian]

There were ... no macaques playing out in the jungle trees.

It almost sounds as though you're saying that's a BAD thing. I have a fresh swarm of macaques show up from time to time, and aside from sparring and general dwarven idiocy, they're probably my worst source of random deaths as they overrun whatever poor sap is taking out the trash or similar.

[madrain]

My last forts have started with an ambusher dwarf, but mostly for the free stuff.  I turn off his hunting upon embark most of the time.  I like having benign creatures roaming about.  I hardly even mind raccoons breaking into camp and scaring the bejeebus out of my dwarves (except for the poor dog who ended up with a mangled upper and lower body, as well as neck and leg injuries).  I get sad when there's no (mostly) harmless creatures running about.

If there's something dangerous on the map, the ambusher gets Activated and sent out as a marksdwarf to eliminate the threat.  When he's off duty I have him carve bone bolts or just haul.

I like hunting, the game just needs a lot of work for it to be as useful as I wish it were.  Maps with no critters make me sad.

[Maltay]

As already stated, Hunters tend to die very quickly.  If it's not hunting dangerous, predatory wildlife - often in packs; it's getting caught outside during a siege.  That said, some of my favorite dwarves have been Hunters.  I tend to get attached to the dwarves who perform awesome martial feats.  If they suffer crippling injuries and recover to continue their blaze of glory, all the better.  I find them more personable, and find my fortress to feel less like an ant farm.  All things said, it's difficult to individually connect with more than a hundred dwarves.  At some point, Farmers become generic, and Peasant recruits all look exactly the same.

My favorite Hunter took on a Giant Eagle and lost her left hand.  She managed to plunk a Bolt in the Giant Eagle's throat, so that it bled to death.  However, it snipped off her left hand before collapsing.  She recovered, and though without a shield, led a long and illustrious career, including a near brush with an angry Sasquatch.  She pegged it in the head and it fell unconscious with what I thought was a debilitating throat injury.  Much to my Hunter's surprise, it hopped to its feet when she closed distance and promptly pummeled her to within an inch of her life before her War Dog sacrified itself to tear out the Sasquatch's throat the rest of the way.  Four years of recovery later, after surviving three red limbs, upper and lower, a red upper torso, and a left arm missing at the shoulder, she resumed Hunting.  She eventually got caught in an ambush, took down four of six Spear Goblins, and managed to crawl back to the fortress entrance nervous system damage and a missing feet before falling unconscious.  Six year later she has largely recovered, minus the missing feet, but she is only ever awake for a few seconds at a time before passing out again.  She has a bed of honor off the main dining hall so people can visit her.

[HammerHand]

I honestly haven't had that much trouble with hunters dying.  I usually lump them into a "Mountaineer" class, which also makes them my woodcutter and animal trainer with a few hauling jobs thrown in - and maybe woodcrafting (even though I'd never use it) to suggest time spent whittling.  Kind of like "woodsman" except more Dwarven.  This means ambushing is a lot harder for my hunters, since woodcutters can't use crossbows to cut down trees, but they manage.

Of course, I rarely actually turn their hunting labor ON, but if anyone's going to do it, it'll be my mountaineer.  After all... my woodcutter has to go outside the fortress walls to do any cutting, anyway.  Might as well give them the leather armor and  dogs a hunter gets.