America Is Backsliding Toward Its Most Polluted Era

They tend to be a pretty hardcore MAGA bunch, but also don't like pollution because it messes up their sport. When you ask them about stuff like this (how can you support someone who pretty openly wants to mess up your pastime?), they get mad or change the subject.

I get it - people are complicated and can care about many things at once. Nobody likes it when someone is seemingly poking at their belief systems. Still - you'd think it'd give them some kind of pause.

Your question (as phrased here) is clearly provocative rather than curious and represents your biases (eg, “openly wants to mess up your pastime”). You don’t consider the two obvious answers, in that they see it differently or they have higher priorities, and are using extreme language.

Are you really surprised people are annoyed by that behavior?

The essence of the question is why do people who love the outdoors vote for politicians who want to repeal laws to protect the outdoors?

I presume that a reasonable person can easily answer this question and defend their position. I can think of several reasonable explanations and I’m opposed to hunting and am in favor of strong environmental regulations.

Because they don't believe that most of those laws are having meaningful benefits. The law of diminishing returns applies to everything, including ever-increasing regulations.

There are clear benefits. They just refuse to see them. You can show a mountain of evidence based on peer reviewed research and they'll hand waive it away and say "Private enterprise could do it better" or some nonsense.