Until the dog is fully domesticated (OK, I'll go home and await his return. He'll bring me meat!), I don't know how they could cooperate on a many-hour hunt like this.
I used to wonder the same about falconry until I met a hawkmaster. The animals don't take prey far away where they'd be hard to find; they hover or perch near the humans in open fields, where they are trivial to find.
I also wondered why they don't just eat the prey. It's because that involves lots of effort; they know a human will shortly arrive with tasty food that isn't wrapped in tough fur. Basically, they trade a package of hamburger for a Big Mac.
Can you elaborate here? This is a weird fascination of mine (man+canine).
I walk long distances with dogs, here's what I've found and ruminated:
1. If I chase or follow a dog, I can chase them to exhaustion.
2. If I'm walking several miles with a dog, they tend to trot ahead of me and stop and pant and wait for me. Rinse, wash, repeat. Bursted energy/rest cycles.
When we are in the field they will triple my distance travelled ( verified by GPS ). My outings are typically 8-12 miles and thus 24-36 miles for the dogs. Of course I need to keep them hydrated during this activity.
The behavior of running forward and looking back is most likely what we refer to as checking in. The dog is trying verify where you are heading/doing. In my dog's case they will range out to around 400 yards and then return to with 20 yards and run passed making eye contact as they run by.
Dogs (and the prey) can do burst sprints, but will easily overheat, and will need to stop periodically to cool down. Humans are furless and sweating is sufficient to regulate our internal temperature, so we can keep jogging for hours on end. Additionally, dogs are great at sniffing out hidden prey at the beginning of a hunt, and once found, humans are excellent trackers.
That only applies in hot climate. In moderate climate, canines have similar performance to humans, in the arctic canines are ~2x better.
In the wider context there are other examples of cross species hunting with octopus and fish for example. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/watch-octopuses-te... So, completely wild wolves doing something similar with humans seems extremely plausible.
Many hunter gather tribes apparently employed this technique and it can still be found today in Africa with the San people.
Sharing food or stealing wolf puppies were probably part of the domestication but was this because humans possibly hunted alongside wolves? Humans possibly being capable of pursuing for longer distances due to better body temperature control through sweating while wolves being better at tracking.
At least that would be my take.