I think an earlier comment of mine would be an appropriate response to this:
Survival having talents that improved melee abilities isn’t the same thing as Survival being a melee spec. They were still a ranged spec that only used their melee abilities when the enemy got within melee range, and the Hunter then tried to get back out of melee range so that they could use their ranged abilities then.
Even if you specced Survival, your bars were still chocked full of ranged abilities, and at best you had 2 melee attacks (3 if you count the completely unviable Lacerate which was removed in Vanilla and replaced with a ranged ability).