I got a gemstone the other day and sold it for 100k-ish plus my 11k-ish hunt right after from my other city. lv 16 with only 1 sub sucks or i'd have more hunts.
For the Gemstone hunt, I had approximately: 16k cav and 25k inf hunting in either a lv 4 or 6 un-owned oasis for approximately 12 hours. 60 fortune(including ring). max speed tech, max speed attribute, max equips.
Highest money hunt i've seen is 24k-ish (slightly higher) from either masterboo or masterori. Don't remember which one. I believe masterboo brags of having 115k cav even though i've seen him with 10k cats and about the same amout infantry as cats. Might be difficult to feed all of that. ZZZZZZZZ's??? O_o
As for ranged. I agree that they aren't very good on hunts. (because of bad speed) That doesn't mean that they will never bring home a decent hunt though because i've seen it. Back when I had a mostly catapult army and NO cavalry and not more than 10k infantry, I was able to get 12k plus hunts. I had about 30k+ cats then though, split between my, at the time, 5 cities. I put all of my ranged on hunt together. Except my archers bc I normally have too many of them to have in one city for too long. The fact still remains that I don't criss-cross my hunts aka ranged and melee.
(yes, i don't care who knows what I have/had)