I was also sailing yesterday, but barely any hunters came to chase us. We got to the 3rd rank, and after a few minutes... no hunter came. So we went to steal someone else's hunter instead
After 10 minutes, our own hunter finally came

They seem to come a lot less frequently then on test.
After about 20 minutes, we got to the forth rank with the hat... We were expecting hunters to come every minute like on test....
2 minutes later, we got inpatient and went to steal someone else's hunter again.
They come about every 5 minutes at forth rank, and we got a SOTL after us, and it was crazy hard!
The hunters are very exciting and hard to defeat, but when they come in a whole fleet, like in yesterday, it was pure epicness. There was a massive crowd of like 30 war frigates gathered around cutthroat, and they attracted a LOT of hunters!
The whole area turned into a War Zone of 30 player ships vs 30 Hunters, and it was pure chaos!!
We got closer, and saw even more ships behind, and several more player ships joined in, which attracted even more hunters.
Since they added "hunter" to bountyhunters, they should add "prey" to play ships.