Thread: Hihitahi Challenge 2014

Cheers for the comments guys,

I have been going through the results over the last day or so and have come up with a few modifications. I'll use the next few posts to show some of those observations. There were six basic components to the event: movement, navigation, distance judging, shooting, tree ID and observation. I will ignore the movement scores as most people found themselves stopped at shooting stages and this affected their movement score.

The longest time taken by any competitor earned that competitor some AA batteries to keep their torch going when they are walking home in the dark

Overall the results were not as good as i expected.

Distance judging: Again results were lower than I expected. The average score was only 10 out of 24 and only two competitors got a score over 15.

The average estimate deviation from the actual distance was 18% of the actual distance.

Interesting where the target was placed up a slope from the competitor they generally overestimated the distance to it. Where the target was placed below the competitor or across a gulley they generally underestimated the distance to it.

Worst distance judging score received a 3m measuring tape to practice with!

Shooting: Ouch… all I can say is Ouch… We set the shooting up as what we thought was easy. 15 of the 20 shots were able to be shot lying down off a daypack or a bipod.

Highest score was 12 from 20, average score was 7. I think the distance judging got most people though and this meant they over thought the shooting. I said going in that someone shooting a “standard” hunting calibre, using a 200m zero and aiming straight at the targets would do alright.

There were people who were more than 100m out on their distance estimate that still hit the target. There was a lot more people that estimated the distance within 50m and they still missed.

Worst shooting score got a toy spud gun and a spud to practice with.

Tree ID: The results here were about what I expected. Some people knew their trees, some people took a tree identification book with them, some people did not know their trees at all.

The average competitor correctly identified 6 from 8 different trees.

Observation: This stage was a huge success I thought. A lot of competitors mentioned to me how much fun they had looking for “hidden” item on the slope in front of them.

I never actually got a chance to sit down and do this stage. I did talk with Malcolm about the 30 minute time limit though. Surely it wouldn’t take 30 minutes to identify 10 items… As it turned out there were only a few people that got all 10 items and they used just about all their time doing so.

Worst observation score got a $2 set of toy binoculars to practice with.