Hunted contestants respond to claims their unlikely capture was 'fake'

Hunted fans have claimed the reality show is “rigged” after contestants Callum and Ben were captured in one of the most unlikely situations during Monday night’s episode.

While travelling on foot in regional Victoria, the pair approached a stranger at a train station to ask if they could use his phone. The man then offered them a place to stay for the night in what appeared to be a kind gesture, however, what they didn’t realise was that the man’s sister was one of the Hunters trying to track them down.

While some viewers have argued the capture was “totally fake” and “completely set up”, Callum and Ben tell Yahoo Lifestyle that “what you see on TV is exactly what happened”.

“What happened was not fake, it wasn’t rigged, it was real,” Callum asserts. “We can't say more about that, but all we can say is that the chances of what happened are astronomically low, but it did actually happen. Nothing was staged.”

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“It's a TV show and there is obviously a lot of editing and the season’s made therein, but I can guarantee that that was all exactly as it played out,” Ben adds.

“Even the Hunters arriving the moment we finished washing the charcoal off our hands from the firewood, it was to the minute. And if we'd been 30 seconds behind, we would have been sitting on their couch and then they would have wandered in.”

'Wrong place wrong time'

The pair admit there are a few things they would do differently if they had the chance to re-do the experience, but overall they are pleased with what they accomplished.

“We had a game plan going in and we wanted to give information overload, which we achieved,” Callum says. “But coming off that mountain that day we never planned that that's how that day would end.

“We felt so safe because there were no wanted posters, there was no hotline, there was no way of them getting in contact with the Hunters. Even though we were in a rural town near people, there was no way that they could get in contact with the Hunters fast enough to capture us, so we felt so safe.”

“What we were doing was working,” Ben remarks. “The event that got us caught had nothing to do with what we were up to, it was all to do with wrong place wrong time.”

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Ben jokes that his biggest piece of advice for future contestants would be to avoid talking to strangers at train stations.

“Don’t trust the public,” he laughs. “Maybe this is the tech nerd in me, but my advice would be to explore the technical side of what you can and can't do.

“I think anyone who goes up against the cyber team needs to be aware that they probably can't beat them, but they can adopt the same strategy that we had of just trying to waste their time and frustrate them and try and get them to focus on the wrong pieces of information. Just explore the possibilities and think outside the box.”

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