Gabe Ross, of Lake Hāwea, and Riley Meason, of East Otago, outplayed top Wānaka adventure racers and fellow finalists Simone Maier and Emily Wilson, going on to win the show and the $100,000 prize.
Speaking to the Otago Daily Times, Meason said the duo, who made up Team Brown in the show, were "over the moon" about their victory.
"We felt pretty proud of ourselves, what we’ve managed to achieve, and what we managed to prove to each other."
Ross agreed, and said it felt good to come out on top of what had been a "pretty crazy" finale.
"It was a weird dynamic ... competing throughout most of the competition against multiple teams, and now it just being a bit of a one versus one situation."
Tracked originally involved eight teams racing across New Zealand’s southern wilds while also attempting to evade capture by a pair of active special forces trackers.
Although Maier and Wilson were "gutted" to come second in the competition, they were generous with praise for their male rivals.
"We really enjoyed the competition with the Browns. We would rather have won, but they did well. It was a tight competition and we are happy for them," Maier, a four times Coast to Coast champion, said.
Queenstown residents Regan Pearce and Regan Pomare, who made up Team Red, came third.
Pearce said while it was unfortunate the final did not come down to those two teams, it was "just fantastic" Team Brown had done the job.
"We're just absolutely stoked for them both.
"Throughout the whole production, the whole mission, those guys worked bloody hard and they are deserved victors.
"We're still good mates and we're having a lot of laughs looking back through what we all did," he said.
Looking towards the future, Ross said the pair wanted to invest more time into The Weekend Mish, a series of hunting, fishing and diving shorts they uploaded to YouTube, Instagram and TikTok.
"We want to go all out now. We want to put that money towards funding our expeditions to get our social media pumping and our small business growing. And then hopefully even pitch a TV show down the line."
All episodes of Tracked, including the finale, are available to stream on ThreeNow, while the finale airs on terrestrial television at 7.30pm tonight on Three.
— Marjorie Cook, Tracey Roxburgh and Regan Harris
