During combat to the death, is maybe the only moment when you can gauge, the true potential of the human drive. Only at that moment, you realize the ecstasy in warm dripping blood, in feeling the last of a beating heart, in granting the end to a soul in terror.
The two possibilities in question, the drive to hunt and the need to survive, both stand on the same pedestal of reality, both value the same in the scale of nature. but that scenario persists only, until one realizes their true potential to play God. It is at this moment of fear of mortality, it is at this moment when one can see life leaving a vessel, this moment makes the hunter realize, the inability of God over Death.
Reading a lot of criminal psychology and papers on psychotic tendencies these days. In most of the cases without a clear motive, the subject reported to have felt gratified in taking a life. Elated to play God.