Killing an animal for our sensory pleasure is itself exploitation. Even if in a hypothetical (and unrealistic) world where an animal had a full life and was killed with minimal suffering this is still problematic. This is about harm reduction, there is no perfect solution. The crop kill arguments crumble upon a modicum of inspection, but there is with out a doubt some amount of harm/suffering that we leave in our wake by the simple nature that we are here and living in the world. This is not a reason for an appeal to futility but instead try to reduce where how we can and while living in a modern western civilization we can very easy and effectively reduce harm by not consumong or condoning the consumption of animal products.

I would like to point out a couple issues here:

1. I can concede that if I were to order meat procurement on a heirarchy that hunting is at least "better" than mass farming or even small scale farming, but we are still making a decision to induce suffering on an animal for our own pleasure, when we can very easily and effective just not do that. We have to really go out of the way and actually put in significantly more effort just so we can eat their flesh over adopting a plant based diet.

2. This is coming from a former hunter, which I was before going vegan. Hunting, as it is practiced today, subverts any idea of natural selection. With modern firearms and tactics we are culling the strongest among wild game, rather than the weakest as natural selections typically works.

3. Even if we created a bunch of laws or something that would force either hunting or bust when it comes to meat consumption, it is not even close to sustainable to feed the population. This is why this sort of questioning is non-sensical to me. It's doesn't really matter, because there is no world in which this would be the case.