The Hunters Challenge

I just came back from The Hunters Challenge. It was a good hunt and I'm glad to be part of it.

I have been trying to enroll my usual team for this hunt since before CNY. Unfortunately, two of my usual team mates were unavailable. We have not hunted in the open hunt since theSun Motor Hunt 2008. I could sense the rust setting in.

I continued to struggle to form a team until the last two weeks before the hunt. The reason I wanted to join is mainly this and for a good cause. I always believe someone (with great experience and well-known in the fraternity) will take that small step to do this. The team Hunters R Us has taken a step they know how to contribute to it. And now it was up to me to contribute my part, starting by at least joining The Hunters Challenge, to learn and grow from there.

Over the years, I could see that many seasoned hunters, masters and CoC taking the efforts to make the treasure hunt sport better in Malaysia. For example, some masters won't mind teaming up with new hunters in open hunts. In the short term, the team might fare worse than a team with all masters. But in the long run, the gap could get closer. And some people realised that joining the hunts is not always about winning. For the novices, this will directly make the learning curve shorter. Already, there are some young hunters getting better and better by the day. I am sure you can name a few. The masters (who can say now that they are masters because they have apprentices) are getting better in turn as well when they mentor their apprentices.

Thanks to the easy access and wide reach of Internet, other seasoned hunters and masters contributed in other ways, e.g. posting tips and pointers in their blogs to share with all hunters and organising online hunts. Some also publish regular updates on up-coming hunts and recent hunt results. I am pretty sure most of you will know where to find them. Also there is a master that gives detailed dissection of the hunt questions on his blog. All this, is very much appreciated by the hunt community.

There are also more CoCs clerking treasure hunts and taking feedbacks from the hunters with the aim of making their next hunt better. Some CoCs started with some areas that needed improvements. I am sure they are aware of it and it is a matter of time, they will become better CoCs. Many CoCs also catered for a larger crowd with the aim of making treasure hunt popular among those new to the sport. That's why the questions have different degree to difficulty and often times, coupled with physical activities that may not please hunt purists.

Anyway, back to The Hunters Challenge. With Prasath and Doug out, we were deprived of our good pacer cum spotter and resourceful solver in the team. With kind reminder from 2 Romans 1 Imposter, I submitted our team's entry late. I thank him for the acceptance of our entry. Our team for this hunt was a scratch team. I got my brother as the driver and Raj got his GF to form the team. So the aim was really to learn, especially for our green hunters in the car.

The night before, our intended car for the hunt was having problem with the gear and we had to use my small car. I had a flu in the evening before and I'd taken a heavy dose of Vitamin C with lots of water. Luckily, I got better in the morning of the hunt.

The hunt started early in the morning 8:00am from Kompleks 3K in Subang Jaya and we immediately struggled with the first two questions. We managed the next few questions but were careless with the "E18" & "13" questions. The painful thing was, we cracked the question and knew what to look for, but still.... arrgh.....

We couldn't get the next two cryptic ones and have ourselves to blame for not thinking right and not followed through on the right thinking line. Luckily we picked up some answers to a few questions in Puchong Jaya.

The next few questions in Bandar Puteri saw us not sweeping the sectors thorough enough to look for answers. Basically, at this time, I knew this was not going to be our day and I was just trying my best to rally my team until the end.

In the end, we did what we could and it wasn't good enough. We also struggled on the treasures and only managed 2 out of 3 questions in the 3 BLIND MICE challenge. But I take this as a learning and will improve from here.

The hunt ended about 1:30pm and we had a good lunch (curry fish head). The Q&A was presented right after and the Top 15 were announced. Although there are some teams had only 4.5 hours to work with, but they fared quite well also. Congratulations to all winning teams!

I must also congratulate Hunters R Us for a job well done for the inaugural The Hunters Challenge. Keep it up and we hope to see more hunts from you soon. Also, I pray for a quick and full recovery for BlogCe5nt.