The civilian AR-15 and the modern military M4 fall into the "assault rifles" category, which is different from a battle rifle like the .30-06 M1 Garand U.S. soldiers fought WWII with, or the typical hunting rifle in many ways. The AR was designed to shoot a smaller caliber (5.56mm) cartridge with less recoil to be easier for the average person to shoot well. You could also carry more ammo because the ammo was lighter, and the gun was designed to use the removable magazine to speed up reloading. The military AR/M4 was originally designed to shoot either in full auto mode (hold down the trigger and it keeps shooting until released or empty) or in 3-round burst mode that fires three rounds per trigger pull. Both were considered wasteful and made it hard to hit a target as the rifle jumped around, so today the modern military M4 rifle is typically set up to shoot either semi-auto (one round per trigger pull) or 3-round burst modes. The civilian version of the M4, the AR-15, legally only shoots semi-auto and you get one shot fired per trigger pull. Single aimed shots is the most accurate way to fire the gun anyway.
True battle rifles like the M1 Garand .30-06 or the M14 7.62×51mm NATO are big, heavy rifles that can reach out and hit a target at greater distances, with more power, but have largely been replaced for the average soldier by the assault rifle which is easier to shoot and has the many advantage I've listed above.
5.56 mm NATO vs .223 caliber, the later being more common in the civilian AR-15. The first difference is the higher pressure level of the 5.56 NATO cartridge which runs at approximately 58,000 psi. A 223 Remington is loaded to approximately 55,000 psi. The second and most important difference between the two is the fact that a 5.56 NATO chamber has a . 125” longer throat. So some guns will shoot both, but many guns are only rated to shoot .223.
Hunting rifles. In many states and in the opinion of most ethical hunters the 5.56/.223 round is too small to hunt deer with reliably. Some states legally require a more powerful and/or larger round. Heck, some states require you hunt with a shotgun with slugs. And we are talking about deer which are relative easy to kill for big game. And the 5.56/.223 is far too weak to try to take a larger animal like an elk, moose or bear with. That doesn't mean lots of deer and those larger animals haven't been taken with one, but most ethical hunters lack the skill to do so and most state laws require hunters use a more powerful caliber with a better chance of a quick, one-shot kill. Which is every ethical hunter's goal.
That doesn't mean the AR isn't a great platform for hunting. The AR comes in an AR-10 version which is chambered in the more powerful 7.62/.308 cartridge, as well as many other calibers more suited to hunting North American big game. And then we get to magazine restrictions for hunting. Most states limit a hunter to 3-4 rounds total in the gun. I don't know of any state that legally allows you to hunt with a full 30-round magazine. So the idea of a gun-nut emptying a 30 round magazine into Bambi is quite illegal and mostly a gun-grabber fantasy.
But most hunters, unless they just love the AR rifle platform, are going to use something like a bolt action rifle in an appropriate caliber for the intended game. I personally use either a scoped, bolt-action .308 rifle or a .50 black powder Hawken rifle on deer, though the Hawken is effective at a much more limited range. You can pick up a nice hunting caliber bolt action rifle with a scope for around $300 all day long. An AR platform rifle in an appropriate hunting caliber will cost you 3-5x that much. But there are many classic hunting rifles that are semi-auto, as well as lever-action, single shot, pump-action and more. Getting fixated on largely cosmetic aspects of a rifle such as color, pistol grips, foldable shoulder stocks, barrel shrouds and such is counterproductive, with the exception of the removable magazine that admittedly does make reloads faster. It's part of what makes an AR a good rifle for self-defense, and so dangerous in the hands of the evil/sick/criminal who are the problem when it comes to gun violence. And noting is as silly as the fight to ban suppressors, which only make guns safer to shoot without damaging your hearing. Using one still requires hearing protection as the shot is still very loud, nowhere near quiet enough to not be noticed.
Let's talk ethics. Hunters have a love for and incentive to care for and protect the wild lands and wild life that lives on them. We provide funding for conservation via our licencing and tag fees, not to mention millions of donated man hours in volunteer work to keep those lands and critters healthy. I personally am a proud member of the Bonner County Sportsman's Society. We help keep deer herds healthy by culling animals that may otherwise starve if left uncontrolled. And I've seen anti-hunting folks trying to disrupt hunts and rattle noise-makers to scare off waterfowl on opening day, but I've never seen them built rain-water catch basins to provide wildlife with the water the need to survive or do anything else to help wildlife or wild lands.
The vast majority of hunters and gun owners are ethical sportsman, and we are the first to report poachers and those who are not. An ethical hunter complies with all regulations and uses a gun of sufficiently powerful caliber to humanely and quickly kill their target. Sometimes you get a one-shot kill, but often it takes a second shot or more to end the animals suffering. Most hunters would agree that using a single shot rifle is an advanced skill as a second shot is slow in coming. Hunters who use guns that are extremely slow to reload, such as a muzzleloading black powder rifle, often carry a backup pistol of some sort where legal in case they need a quick followup shot to put the animal down.
And bow hunting is wildly popular, which requires an even higher level of skill, hours and hours of practice, and you have to either stalk to or wait for the animal to come much closer for a humane kill. The idea that hunting is bubba with an AR-15 blasting 30 rounds at Bambi on full-auto is, again, both illegal and generally a gun-grabbing fiction.
I personally know hunters who will spend days in the woods just sitting under a tree or in a stand because they have a fierce love and respect for the wild outdoors. Many of them will pass up on harvesting an animal until close to the last day to extend their season and time in the field. And many of them spend lots of dollars and time in the off-season improving their lands to grow healthy animals they can harvest to put food on their family's table. Which many of us consider more ethical than letting others kill and butcher your meat so you can collect it in neatly wrapped packages in the supermarket.
To wrap up this rambling post, a gun is just a tool that the overwhelmingly vast majority of the time are used legally and safely to support a perfectly honorable and respectable way of life.
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