Post-LotR work on the Silmarillion (published in Morgoth's Ring) indicates that the Elves certainly did hunt, the most telling quote being:
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The Elves had before possessed only weapons of the chase, spears and bows and arrows.
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There's also Aule's reply to Yavanna after his making of the Dwarves:
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That shall also be true of the Children of Iluvatar; for they will eat and they will build. And though the things of thy realm have worth in themselves, and would have worth if no Children were to come, yet Eru will give them dominion, and they shall use all that they find in Arda: though not, by the purpose of Eru, without respect or without gratitude.
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The concept of Elves as vegetarian hippies living in commune with nature is true only of the Nandor, but is otherwise largely a later trope, perhaps a case of a D&D-ism working backwards and infecting Tolkien, but in Tolkien's own writings there's no grounds for this trope.