I have wondered this myself. I can see how it would be useful if you missed your target and it returned to you. But the demonstrations I have seen, where the boomerang is thrown and returns, the boomerang is usually thrown at an angle up in the air rather than near the ground or treeline where a person would be hunting. It seems like in a realistic hunting scenario the boomerang would most likely be thrown in a way that would cause it to hit the ground or some vegetation and not return.

To expand on that last sentence for anyone who doesn't know, a well-shaped hunting boomerang is meant to fly in a straight line, faster and farther than throwing a similarly-heavy stick that you just picked up off the ground. Which lets you hit targets (such as the animals that you're hunting) from farther away with more accuracy. If it's designed to return to you, it must necessarily fly in a curve, which makes it a lot harder to hit a target than a stick designed to fly in a straight line (and if you do hit a target, it's not going to return to you as it expends its kinetic energy on the target).

Boomerang can be returning or non returning .

Etymology in both the language of Dharwal and in English indicate it has been used from the start to include non returning ones as well.

there has been strong efforts to make it only to returning ones (official competitions do not allow throwing sticks for example ) the inclusive use however is still quite active .

Webster defines it explicitly without the return part (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/boomerang) other dictionaries define it differently

If the definition is unambiguous it would be an oxymoron, but isn’t so.

In the era of attention grabbing headlines to survive even for the BBC it is quite natural the editor or author wanted to use a catchy title , but it isn’t oxymoronic