I want to remove the big white arrow that represents the player's icon and the the view cone thing because it is becoming an eyesore. I have tried loading new hud_white.tga with total transparency which gives me what I want (not seeing big white arrow) but at the same time modding this texture bugged out the weapon reticle causing it to be all black, with no hit flash.

I also don't what to actually look for in the HUD file related to this. Any help would be cool.

From the hud file:
find the element you want to remove. I think it's maybe hud_map_fov.msh you can find it under data/common/mesh. Follow my HUD tutorial to remove the mesh.
Removing the texture doesn't work because if there is a texture missing the mesh is painted black. furthermore the white.tga is used by many meshs. So best way is to remove the mesh instead of it's texture

I followed your HUD guide and the player icon still remains. I attempted to make a new file with hud_large_map_fov.msh and hud_map_fov.msh scaled to 0.0 but it didn't do anything.

did you load the new mesh at the right position??