If you are a reasonably good hunter, you know what you are doing, etc., is bagging a deer each season a foregone conclusion? If not, about how many hunting trips result in a deer- say, nine out of ten?
What is the easiest animal to hunt? What is the hardest? Easiest being most likely to bring some meat home, hardest being least likely.
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I think you’re primarily going to get a lot of anecdotes on this one. “Reasonably good hunters” still can have widely varying quality of equipment and weather conditions they’re subjected to. Primarily though I’d say it’s where you’re trying to hunt and your familiarity with that property and game habits on it that’ll be the key factor.
For instance, my last deer hunt in Colorado required me to stake out and observe unfamiliar eating and migration patterns for about five days, sometimes eight or so hours a day before getting the large buck I wanted five minutes before dark on my last day there. A couple of weeks later I hunted a familiar lease in Texas and a few minutes after leaving camp dropped two game management deer about four seconds apart. I’ve harvested deer there every year without fail for twenty years now.
So yes, it’s possible to be confident your efforts won’t be for naught. So too though can location, weather, selectivity, equipment and just plain old luck have a say in it.
I believe deer or feral hog are the easiest big game. Dall sheep might require the most effort, at least within the scope of what I’d tackle.
I know guys that hunt every year. Among them, a couple guys harvest every year, most do not.
Local population density matters, too. Areas where deer are overpopulated? Try NOT to hit one (esp. not with your car … ) but in areas where they’re scarce it’ll be a different story.
Too many variables to answer definitively, I’d say.
Where you hunt is a big factor, also what you are hunting.
I do a bear hunt and I’ve been doing it long enough that I have a good idea of the odds. You’ve got about a 50% chance of seeing a bear and if you do a 50% chance of getting it. So about 25% chance of success.
Deer hunting in NH, VT and ME is very tough. Most hunters don’t get a deer. Many hunters never do. Seriously. Up in the north woods you have a chance at a HUGE buck. But there are guys who go twenty years without getting one. I know I have.
However, I’ve got about twenty deer down in the southern areas of NH and MA where there are more deer.
A friend goes to GA every year and there are many more deer so it’s unusual for him not to get one. I went to SC and shot two in a week and could have taken more.
As far as what’s toughest to hunt, I’d have to say it depends. Ram is the toughest physical hunt they say. You have to hike way up steep mountains.
Is a Musk Oxen hunt tough? They just stand there and even are considerate enough to have the biggest bulls out in front to protect the herd.
But you’ve got to cross the arctic circle to get to them on a snowmobile with a native who you’ve never met before and are now trusting your life to who may or may not get you home alive. Also it’s twenty degrees below zero.
Deer are tough to hunt because they are the ultimate prey animal. They can see you, even in the dark. They can smell you just like a dog can. They have great hearing and are always alert. They blend in and are nearly invisible.
It’s not easy.
Yeah, too many variables; for instance, the easiest animal to hunt would be cows, the hardest would be Bigfoot or Giant Squid.
I misread that. I thought it said Bullsquid. Which, come to think of it, would also score very high on the “damn hard to hunt” scale. 
Skilled hunters often crank up their own difficulty level if hunting gets too easy for them. Rifle hunting from a box stand in an area with an overpopulation of deer can be just as easy as showing up, sitting still, and not screwing up the shots you are given. Black powder hunting is harder because the shots have to be made at much closer range. Bow hunting is difficult for almost anyone.
Well, if I ever do take up hunting (a very likely possibility) it would be in southeast Missouri, where it’s all you can do not to trip over a deer every time you step outside. People there also hunt pheasant, dove, turkey, squirrels, rabbits, and ducks.
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Some hunts or seasons also have specific strictures - what you’re allowed to do, what you’re allowed to bag, when or where you’re allowed to be hunting, what you’re allowed to use to hunt with … the list goes on.
My dad was hugely into hunting - he would get at least two deer per season in SC, sometimes as many as 5 or 6. However, he was hunting our own property, in an area where deer are practically a nuisance animal, and where we had several deer feeding areas established consistently for many years.
He would also travel up to Maine and Vermont every year and try for Elk and Moose, and as far as I know, never bagged one himself, although the hunting groups he was with often had other members who did.
Before he passed away, he was moving into black powder, because he wanted a challenge. Several of my uncles bow-hunt regularly, but I think that’s more in response to restricted rifle-hunting seasons more than anything else.
Moving on to the actual OP question - I would think that some of the varmint or nuisance animals would be likely “easy” to hunt from a convenience standpoint. Not too much effort or skill required to stand in your back yard and blam at squirrels or crows with a shotgun at close range, although pretty soon they’ll be much harder to find. I have heard anecdotally that coyote are damn hard to hunt, but I don’t know personally.
It’s amazing how those animals that you’re tripping over during everyday life suddenly disappear the moment you’re in the woods with a weapon! 
I have been reasonably successful at deer hunting, to the point that I expect to bring at least one home each deer season, but that’s mainly because I have access to private land owned by family members. I had a 5 year stretch hunting on public land where I never even saw a deer.
Turkey are quite challenging to hunt. They have excellent eyesight and usually must be called within range, so you have to know how to sound like a turkey while remaining motionless and well-camouflaged.
Some factors affecting chances, directly or indirectly:
[ul]
[li]Your state, and how plentiful game is - More urban areas/states can be harder, and farming states may have a food source for animals to congregate around. Here game is not so plentiful, but there is lots of public land/WMA/BLM[/li][li]Land access - related to above, if you are friendly with someone who has property, your chances are higher[/li][li]What type of game - Bighorn sheep is much harder to find than mule deer around here, and often takes months of scouting beforehand[/li][li]Your tag type - if you draw a buck tag and only see does, you can’t shoot them legally[/li][li]Danger of the game - wild hogs or big five animals can kill you (fun fact: the buffalo is the most dangerous). You’d in the least be more cautious?[/li][li]Personal choice - happened to a friend. He went on a several day trip and saw a herd of elk. Elected not to fire because he wanted to enjoy the rest of the week, and not worry about preservation. Never saw another one.[/li][/ul]
I’ve been skunked many a time, but upland game, not deer
Rabbits are plentiful in most places, but wily. Doves and other migratory birds have small windows to hunt. Most other animals completely depend on where you are hunting.
A friend of mine has a good story about how while his dad had been going after turkeys with 3D camo, calls etc. unsuccessfully for several years, he (my friend) got one who wandered within range one morning while still in his sleeping bag.
Hard to put factuals into the second question. I don’t know any professional hunter who can give you a rundown for each type of game. All I would have to go on are hunting tales from gun magazines more than 30 years ago. Just the things I remember:
I think the most difficult is pheasant hunting without a dog. Those birds are pretty smart.
Mandatory response: What was a turkey doing in his sleeping bag?
Usually, if you want to use a gun, there’s a whole host of regulations, licenses, etc. that you need to get, seasons, restricted areas, etc.
Imho, the best and cheapest way to learn about hunting is fishing. In the beginning, you’ll be lucky to catch any fish at all, but once you get the hang of it, it’s not uncommon to catch 20 or more in a day. Some areas have restricted seasons, but it’s rare. More common are size restrictions where fish of a certain size must be released.
I have never known anyone that actually expects to bag a deer more than 50% of the outings even in areas where they are plentiful and even that is optimistic. Hunting is hard work and a lot of people that have never been exposed to the sport don’t understand that. It is also quite necessary because certain animals like deer thrive at the fringes of human populations, carry disease like Lyme disease, pose extreme risks to vehicles. and will literally starve themselves to death once the herds get too large and a season of bad weather leads to a dearth of food for them. There are more white-tail deer in North America today than at any time in history and the population is growing. They kill more people per year than mass shootings ever will.
“Deer-vehicle collisions lead to about 200 human deaths and $1.1 billion in property damage every year.”
I come from a family of extreme hunters but I have little interest in the activity myself and it has nothing to do with not wanting to kill deer. I always say deer hunting manages to combine three of the things I hate the most into one terrible package: waking up super early, enduring the cold, and sitting still for extended periods. I have done it before and even had a buck in my sights in my first outing but decided not to shoot just because I knew I would be caught up all day butchering the deer by hand and going through first kill ceremonies. God bless anyone that wants to go through that though. Most responsible hunters are the best ecologists around pay a lot of money to support wildlife sustainability projects. They do a very necessary service and pay for it themselves.
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Just think that someday you and your family might have to hunt to eat. If you and your kids haven’t eaten for three days, you’ll eat the deer meat right there and then. 
Not just guns. Some states have weird regulations, like the second week of November is for bow hunters, or black powder can do it the last two weeks of February.
Haven’t gotten to that point yet with fishing 
failure is more common than success, but at least with hunting, it seems harder and I can justify it that way.
Hear, hear. I know people who don’t hunt and probably never held a gun, and think it’s the easiest thing in the world because every gun is super accurate and animals are plentiful. They also thing that it’s impossible to miss with a shotgun if you point it in the general direction.
Upland hunting only has one of the 3. Waking early. The rest is a bunch of walking.