RE: sniper rifle for hunting?
Depends on how you define a sniper rifle.
Civil war snipers more often than not, used iron sights, though a few crude telescopic sights were available.
The Boers tore the Brittish to pieces sniping them out to 700 meters using iron sighted mauser 96s in 7x57.
WWII snipers ran the gamut from .22 LR rifles with iron sights, to a wide vartiety mosin nagant models with irons or optics, to more advanced systems based on Enfield, mauser, Springfield, and garand rifles. There were even sniper rifles based on oddball semiautomatics including the sks, gewehr 41 and 43 and svt 40, not to mention dragonov rifles still used today.
Vietnam era snipers still largely used 1903 springfield sniper rifles.
A modern typical hunting rig using a remington, savage, weatherby, winchester, or browning rifle with decent quality glass is going to be more accurate than 99% of military sniper rifles used in the past.