Hunted stars reveal 'sneaky' strategies to avoid getting caught

After travelling hundreds of kilometres around Victoria, making several connections with strangers and falling over a handful of times, Jess and Erina-Lea’s time on Hunted officially came to an end on Tuesday night.

The Gold Coast friends were the second team of ‘Fugitives’ to be captured on Channel Ten’s thrilling new reality TV show and spoke candidly with Yahoo Lifestyle following their elimination all about the experience.

“That was one hell of an adventure and damn was it fun,” Jess remarks.

“There were so many mixed emotions,” Erina-Lea adds. “It was such an adrenaline high, so many endorphins going through our body and so much anxiety and paranoia.”

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The thrill-seeking duo explain that heading onto the show they “planned not to prepare” and instead tried to go with the flow.

“We had a general idea on where we wanted to go and where to sleep and things like that, but when it comes to a hard plan, we knew that every day may be different and we'd have to change it up,” Jess says.

“We just knew we wanted to constantly be moving,” Erina-Lea explains. “We didn't want to sit in the hopes that they would then catch up to us and catch us. We also met so many people along the way that offered us help and we never even had to ask, so we had a lot of things planned just on the fly.”

‘I did a little sneaky thing’

While they weren’t allowed to use their own mobile phones on the show, the pair had plenty of “sneaky” tactics to stay in contact with their associates and avoid being caught.

“We had a book with people's phone numbers in it,” Erina-Lea shares. “So I did a little sneaky thing and I went to Smiggle and bought myself this pen where you could write with it and then you have to turn it over and use a blue light. So if the Hunters ever looked in there, they wouldn't see anything.

“And then we just borrowed people's phones in case we needed to get in contact with someone. We did send a letter to a friend of mine with a little coded message on there which only she would know what it meant, and then we had hopes of meeting up with her as well.”

They went on to reveal that one major moment in their adventure that wasn’t shown on TV was when the Hunters sent Jess “a dodgy email” to try and catch her out in case she checked her account.

“They had pretended to be one of my contacts at Red Bull offering us a helicopter,” Jess details, “Which was something we were trying to plan beforehand but unfortunately, due to the show’s insurances and Red Bull’s insurances, we couldn't make it work.

“And we didn't have our devices, so it was only when I received my device back the email was in my inbox from ‘Red Bull’ saying like, ‘We’ve dealt with the insurances, we’re ready, we just need you to come sign the waivers, meet us here’.

“Imagine if we had gotten that on the run, we would have been there straight away!”

Advice for next season's stars

Despite finishing earlier than they had hoped, Jess and Erina-Lea have plenty of advice for future contestants on the reality show.

“At the end of the day, you’re not going to outrun them,” Jess laughs. “You cannot outpace them because they are robots, they’re not human. So the best chance you have is to disguise yourself and make yourself invisible.”

“I probably wouldn't use our contacts,” Erina-Lea says. “If you can minimally use people you know and rely on the kindness of other people and the public, I think that is the way to go. And just get out of places where there are cameras.”

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