It's ime for the obnoxious XML::Twig guy to step in I guess ;--)

XML::Twig is designed for that kind of situation, it will let you load a view of the document that includes only the root and the Hit_num elements:

my $twig= XML::Twig->new( twig_roots => { Hit_num => 1 } );
$twig->parsefile( $file);
my @hit_nums= $twig->root->children;
# do stuff with the Hit_num's
[download]

Alternatively you can handle each Hit_num during the parsing:

my $twig= XML::Twig->new( twig_roots => { Hit_num => \&hit_num } );
$twig->parsefile( $file);

sub hit_num
  { my( $t, $hit_num)= @_;
    # do stuff with the hit_num

    # $t->purge will free the memory if you don't need 
    # to keep the hit_num around

  }
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If you need to pass additional info to the handler you can use a closure, as diotalevi showed:

my $twig= XML::Twig->new( twig_roots => { Hit_num => sub { hit_num( @_
+, $state_info); } } );

# ...
sub hit_num
  { my( $t, $hit_num, $state_info)= @_;
[download]

BTW there was a pretty good article by Simon Cozens on perl.com a while ago that gives more details on closures: Achieving Closure.