Agreed. The wolf-dogs would have been smart enough to recognize that everybody wins when the dangers of the hunt are shared with humans bearing spears & standoff weapons (slings & bows). In turn the humans would benefit from the wolves powerful endurance and seen the value of pushing large game to exhaustion before attempting the kill.
Wolves would not have been domesticated at this point since there would have been no selective breeding taking place. The wolf pack would have been on the periphery of the human encampment, everpresent.
Anybody here ever been raised in the mountains? These wolves will come alone by themselves at night and sit right at the edge of the campfire and just look at you, waiting for something to eat. Up n` here, the wolves are solitary or travel in pairs, not in a pack.
The wolf will know if you have a gun and if you are menacing or not. But experience has been is that they know who you are already by your scent. Thus they ain`t scared of you. They usually travel long distances from the high mountains during droughts down to the mountain farms- So they already know who`s gonna shoot at them or not.
Met my first big wolf on the hill when I was 14 on the farm. I called out to him but he ran away. 4 years later encountered another one about 20 miles away at night. This one walked right up to the campfire which we had made really big to keep bears etc away. He walked right up to the edge of it right next to a tree and just stood there looking at a us. So he knew who we were. Otherwise he wouldn’t have never come that close. Them wolves is smarter than humans is. Yup.