It was actually the highest DPS Hunter spec during Uldir and it was still underplayed. People who are new to the class also tend to pick BM/MM. This isn't just a numbers problem or an adjustment to change problem. We are far too long into melee Survival for these weak excuses to still work.
The fact of the matter is the spec both fails to appeal to the people who currently play the class, people who may reroll from other classes, or people who are new to the game. Sure, it pulls in some small amount from those groups, but nowhere near what it needs to.
For reference, when Explosive Shot and Lock and Load were added to the spec in 3.0 it became a popular spec
immediately. It did not take favourable damage tuning and years of player adjustment to gain new players. The players came right away.
You can, actually. People love to hide behind the "my opinion!" shield all day but opinions can in fact be delusional. For example, if someone has the opinion that the sky is purple, they are delusional. In this case, if someone said Hunters should have always been more about melee and ranged when it was the class defined around ranged combat and the only vector of meaningful ranged weapon combat in this game then they are in fact delusional and so infatuated with melee they should be sticking to something they know like Warrior or Rogue.
It's a melee DPS with ranged capability. That is not unique in WoW. Unholy and Outlaw are both marketed with those terms. Unholy even has a pet so it's not even unique in that respect. There's also the fact that it borrows a significant amount of its toolkit and identity from BM.
They managed to take a popular ranged spec and turn it into one of the game's most reviled melee specs. Spin it all you want, but it's a failed rework.
When the spec used to be very popular and then after a rework it is permanently unpopular, it kind of is proof that it was a bad rework. Most of the time when something is popular, undergoes a major change, then becomes unpopular, people consider that to be a failure. People just like to spin-doctor that away when it comes to Survival due to personal biases. But ultimately they spent a bunch of work in remaking a spec only to drive away most of its playerbase and keep it as the "unpopular joke spec that needs attention" for years on end.
I know it's fun to shit on Hunters all day for being unskilled and lazy, but the fact of the matter is a) the class is not out of line with the amount of skill required for most other specs (and if you disagree, feel free to refer to any iteration of Arcane Mage for reference) and b) people arent stupid noobs for wanting to use ranged weapons.
It also seems like you're stuck in Legion where Survival actually had a ton of discordant mechanics that were difficult to manage. This isn't Legion and Survival is significantly streamlined to the point where it really isn't that far out of line compared to the other specs. It's just as simple as them unless you take specific builds to add complexity which is also something you can do with the others.
It was literally defined with the most explicit language possible in WoW's supporting material from the very start of the game as the class that is made unique by its mastery of ranged weapons.
You might live in a fantasy universe where this isn't the case but we've already established that your opinions are delusional so that's no surprise.
P.S. "using what's available to hunt" specifically precludes the notion of not being able to operate at full effectiveness with a ranged weapon so grats on that self own.
You try to diminish the opinions of people who hate melee SV here but they are far more valid and legitimate than whatever you regurgitate onto these boards. People came to the Hunter class expecting ranged combat and over a decade into the game's lifespan a bunch of newer, egotistical, unskilled developers decided they would take out a ranged spec from under us and replace it with an Arms Warrior ripoff. Hunters aren't stupid or afraid of change for not being on board with that and they are fully in the right to oppose it. I know it's had to perceive when you are so infatuated with melee gameplay that you can't possibly see ranged players as equals but you have to put in some effort to overcome your personal flaws here.
You have to love the mental gymnastics here. "Melee survival taking away the ranged Survival playstyle isn't a reason to hate melee Survival!". Um, yes, actually, it is a completely valid reason. Melee Survival is the reason ranged Survival doesn't exist so melee Survival is the problem. It isn't up to Marksmanship to awkwardly juggle ranged Survival's mechanics and gameplay. Marksmanship is a different spec with a separate identity and gameplay style. Trying to offer ranged Survival's gameplay via MM was always a bad idea pushed forward by people who are so ignorant of ranged gameplay that they see all ranged specs as the same thing. I know you fit into that camp so I'll put it in terms a melee lover can understand: imagine if they went to Assassination Rogue and took away stealth and melee attacks in order to turn it into a half-assed Marksmanship ripoff because "Assassination is just Subtlety with poisons! Just put its current stuff in Subtlety and let that spec deal with the stealthy stuff! Rogues aren't defined around being stealthy dual-wielders, you know!".
You'll never admit it out of pride and melee favouritism but Survival will always be the circus freak of WoW class design. Unless, of course, they own up to their mistakes and bring back ranged Survival. Then we can all forget this failed experiment and move on. But we know that the class developers are just as proud as they are bad at their jobs so they'll never backtrack on something like that.