Since I’ve been posting about rules for current Outdoorsmen events, I thought I’d write something about events that have been at one time or another a part of the Outdoorsmen but were retired for various, sometimes obvious, reasons.

The reason I am including this is so that anyone interested in creating an event similar to ours will see that there are a lot of other events you can create for your very own Outdoorsmen. If you don’t like some of the stuff we do, then you can certainly make up your own events. Maybe you’ll even consider some classics like these…

THE MAN HUNT

I still think this is a great idea for the Outdoorsmen, but it never really worked that well for us. The premise is pretty simple; one man takes off into the wilderness and is chased by a team of Outdoorsmen. The ‘hunters’ have three minutes to track him down and tag him.

It’s really just a rip-off of hide-and-seek but it had a convoluted scoring system and more times than not ended up with a fast guy getting to the gravel road as quickly as possible and simply outrunning everybody else. Still, there is potential here for a really good event.

LOG CHOP

Just as it sounds. You take an axe and chop a log in half. The team that does it the fastest wins. We canceled this after two years because it just doesn’t seem to be a good idea to be weilding an axe wildly while you’re drunk. My goal is to compete in as many Outdoorsmen as possible and I think losing a foot or an arm is simply going to cut down on the number of Outdoorsmen I’ll be able to enjoy.

At several points we also considered, but never implemented, archery competitions or marksmanship events, but for similar reasons decided against doing them.

SPEEDWALKING

There may be no Olympic event as glorious or thrilling as the speedwalking contest. Speedwalking is perfect for those of us who don’t like to run. It combines great walking skills with laziness.

We did this event for two years but ran into ‘technique’ issues. The problem was that no matter how hard you tried to not run, someone would always break their gait and end up running to the finish line.

It turns out there are very specific guidelines and rules for speedwalking. It’s not as simple as it sounds. Knees and stride have to meet certain standards and at the end of the day we just decided we didn’t care enough about learning the technicalities of speedwalking so we canceled the event.

Besides, it seems kind of silly to be out in the mountains speedwalking all over the place.

SPITTING FOR DISTANCE
SPITTING FOR ACCURACY

In the first year of the Outdoorsmen, when we were basically making up events as we went along, we didn’t have a lot to work with. One great resource we all had, however, was spit.

So, we created not one, but two events to capitalize on this terrific renewable resource. Spitting for distance, of course, is a great event for all the power spitters in the group. Spitting for accuracy was an event created for the finesse spitters, the ones that could drop a luggie on a dime from 30 feet and not even need to wipe their chin.

Both events lasted for two or three years and then they just got boring. It’s not as much fun as it sounds. I know that’s probably hard for a lot of people to believe, but spitting competitions are kind of dull.

But please, if this is something that you think would kick ass for you and all your friends, then go for it. It’s one event that requires almost no set up or work and for spitting fans it’s like dying and going to a spitting heaven filled with golden spitoons and plenty of napkins.

WHEELBARROW RACING

Again, maybe we were unprepared or something, but this is another event that required no props, accessories, equipment or resources of any kind. It is the old walk-on-your-hands as your partner pushed your feet. It was charming for maybe four minutes.

Still, it is a simple event to pull off if you’re doing an Outdoorsmen on the cheap or if you decide tonight that you’re going to do an Outdoorsmen tomorrow, you could probably throw this event in there and be okay.

We gave this one up after a year or so because it wasn’t as entertaining as the Dead Man Carry and not as challenging as the Death Race 2000 (now Death Race 3000).

There are probably another half-dozen events that we have since given up for one reason or another. But like I said, some of these events may be right down your alley or you may create your very own events that work well for you.

The 15 events we have now have not changed in some time. They work well for us and provide a nice range of skills and challenges.