I wonder if the hunter gather societies could have grown larger if they put in the same level of work as the agricultural societies?

One could debate what leads to a better quality of life. Is it more downtime and community, like we see with hunter gatherers. Is it the modern conveniences we end up with through larger societies and more work effort?

I watched a video of a polyglot who learned the language of a hunter gatherer tribe to spend some time with them. It was amazing to see how well adapted they were to the environment, both in terms of their bodies and skills. The outsider was getting eaten up by bugs and cut by every little branch or thorn, while the locals had thicker skin and seemed completely unaffected by all of this. They were running through the forest at night and it seemed effortless. While hunting they needed a bag at one point, so someone grabbed some stuff off a tree and quickly wove one together like it was nothing. What ends up being a survival realty show for us ends up looking quite convenient for them. If I need a bag I need to work to earn money, then depend on a whole supply chain to grow/manufacture the raw materials, weave the fabric, cut and assemble the fabric into a bag, and a retailer to sell it to me, as well as all of the shipping on trucks, boats, and planes along the way. It’s actually pretty crazy how much work goes into everything we buy.

I suggest reading The Dawn of Everything, by David Graeber and David Wengrow. They argue that there's not a true dichotomy between agricultural and hunter-gatherer societies. In fact, many societies practice(d) both.

This is a concise description of the current understanding

Marshall Salhins Stone Age Economics is the most popular work that is academically serious on this topic

This is actually one of the key points Yuval Noah Harari made in his landmark book 'Sapiens' (a must-read, probably the book I've recommended more than any other)