As for hunting, my friend found this little spreadsheet some angel put together. I saved it as a .PDF here: Google Drive.
It seems Perfect quality pelts, carcasses, and items collected from a panther ($21), a cougar ($19.75), a buck ($14.90), and a ram ($11.25) pay out the most amounts.
Every animal after that is less than $11 with all the items collected from them.
It helps to tame a wild horse and use it to store a second carcass when you're out hunting and having your saddled horse follow behind.
As far as griefers. I have found myself and my friend in a server just to ourselves after doing some story / stranger missions. When we come out of completing the missions there is no one but us in the server. Not very useful but if it happens to you, it's a good opportunity to do some hassle-free hunting.
I was pleasantly surprised when I turned in a perfect buck carcass for $10 last night in the Great Plains west of Blackwater. I'll have to search out these cougars next time in that area.
