Do you have evidence to suggest strength training correlates to hunting results? I'd bet the correlation there is even less than weighted vest running to rucking.
Strength correlates to everything. It is the most common way in which you interact with the world: you apply external force to walk, get up from the toilet, push a chair across the room, pick up a box off the floor, run, hike, carry weight, pick up a pack. There is no way in which you interact with the physical world that doesn’t require some measure of strength.
Strength training is a general adaptation in that strength doesn’t tend to be so exclusive to individual tasks. Either your muscles are strong enough for the task or they are not. And, generally speaking, They stronger you are, the longer your muscles can complete a sub maximal task. So, for example, spinal erectors do all sorts of tasks, but their main job is to protect the spine. Your spine by itself probably can’t support a 100 pounds of axial loading without snapping, but the spinal erectors, with proper training, have been proven to withstand over 1000 lbs of axial loading.
To the specifics of the question, I’m sure the research exists, but if you need convincing that glutes keep you upright and stronger glutes keep you upright under more stress, then the research is irrelevant. It should be obvious that the body only adapts to the stress you actually apply. Being stronger than you need to be to complete a task is an asset, being weaker is a liability. Quads do one task -they extend the knee. The stronger the quad, the more stress the quad can endure to continue extending the knee. The same applies for every muscle in your body and, more importantly to how strength applies in the real world, your body as a whole since real world tasks are often multi joint, complex movements such as walking, running, climbing, crawkijg, throwing, pushing, pulling etc.
basic strength training employs the most fundamental human movement patterns: squatting , pressing & pulling and trains the movements in an extremely stressful manner so that the body adapts by getting stronger performing these fundamental movement patterns. You’re going to need a body strong enough to carry the weight you want to carry and move how you want to move in the mountains regardless of how you achieve that outcome so, at some point, it becomes a question of return on investment for your time and No matter what you believe about fitness, you are going to need to be strong enough to interact with the demands of rucking in the mountains. If you’re not strong enough, you won’t be able to do it. So, then consider what the most efficient and effective way to get strong is.
Off the couch, The longest, most inefficient aspect of conditioning is getting the muscles strong enough to do the task (running, hiking, whatever). If you’re muscles are already strong, then it’s more a matter of making that specific adaptation to doing the task over and over again for sustained periods of time. My experience as a devout strength trainee who does multiple endurance based sports quite extensively throughout the year is that conditioning takes 3 weeks of sport specific training. It takes 3 weeks of ski mountaineering to get in shape for ski mountaineering. It takes 3 weeks of cycling to get in shape for Mtn biking. It takes 3 weeks of scouting (rucking) to get in shape for Mtn hunting. Outside of that 3 week window and actually doing the sport themselves in season, I put all of my resources into strength training because it has the longest lasting training effect, is the most practical use of the most amount of training time and has the most general application to interacting with the world, be it walking around doing day to day activities, longevity, or specific athletic pursuits.