Tree stand safety!!!

A few years ago, I was in my buddies box blind. The door was behind me. The little fold up chair, clasped do to dry rot and I fell out backwards 8’ to the ground. I was lucky!! All I broke was my right wrist. It was tuff getting home. I had a standard truck then. So, be careful! If you or off the ground!!

I was an Ironworker for years and never tied off. It carried over to everything I do off the ground.

But like with seat belts, I can't tell the kids to wear them if I'm not setting the examplevand doing so myself. Having kids was a good influence on me. Especially now in a bit older and my balance and reaction time is not what it was.

I am an Industrial climber, 90% tower work. I work on and off with Iron workers from and outfit called Tower Inspection, Those dude are on another level.

Hats off to the Iron workers out there. You earn those checks. You're all Crazy with No F's to give.

There was a local guy here that fell from a treestand and died In September.

He was 43

For what its worth that guy on 31OCT wasnt wearing a safety harness.....atleast that was the word among the hunters.

When I was younger I was invincible (or so I thought) and never tied off in a tree. Some stands you had to be part squirrel to even get into.

Now I tie off to a life line or climbing harness when I leave the ground.

At some point I wanted to make sure I was around and functional for my family.

Well ther are 3 possibilities i can think of. It was not connected to anything, the connection was poorly done/or broke, or he was suspended for long enough hanging in the harness did him in. Well maybe 4. I have heard first hand accounts of one contractor having a harness put on a dead guy after he fell. I heard about it from one of the guys that put him into the harness. Something to do with liability and insurance payouts for his family if he was found to not have been in a harness or some such...

It happens fast and can happen to anyone at anytime regardless of our abilities. Several guys I worked with are now dead from falls and job injuries. Including one guy that took my place after I quit on a tower we were building in Louisiana, the guy that trained me tower building, and a good friend I worked with building smoke stacks.
Ant one of them could have been me. The tower in Louisiana would have been . The guy working the top connected the gin pole to the tower to the braces not the support point on the climbing face. The welds broke and the 60' gin pole spun 180 and was hanging by the bottom cables. When it spun it caught the guy on the botoms leg creating compound fractures. At that point the only way up or down was to climb and that was not possible for him. He hung there and bleed to death before an emergency response to get him down could be done.

The guy working the top was a pot head and I'm sure he was stoned. That was less than 2 weeks after I quit. And a main reason I did. I picked a good time to quit it seems.

Buddies wife missed a step coming out of tree stand bow hunting. Had bit to much slack in her descending harness line. Spiked into the ground broke her leg. Then hung there in the dark for an hour foot off the ground. She was able to call her husband and he went got her. She couldn't reach around tree far enough to release the cam. So had to just hang there until he cut her loose. Sounds like BS but she actually had coyotes checking her out while she hung there. Put her phone on speaker and talked to a girl freinds while waiting for husband to come.
I gotta say she got lotta moxie.
She has decided to use a ground blind from now on.

Mac

I hate using the harness. It is a PITA. I do it anyway.

One of the reasons i switched to a saddle.

If you hunt off the ground then the harness is just another piece of hunting gear you need. For @$99.00 you can buy a good harness with a lineman’s rope and a life line. If your life ain’t worth $99.00, then climb without it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspension_trauma

It is good to take measures against falling but there are nasty consequences for dangling from a harness.

I’ve take classes on harness use and fall safety. They taught us how to use the life line to make a loop to stand in and take the pressure off the groin area when you are hanging after a fall. I have a Muddy harness that came with a strap attached to one side of the harness and is for making a step to stand in, does the same thing as the life line loop.

YEA I thought I was superman until I was about 50 .Turns out I was wrong While I did not fall I almost did and I probably should have It was my day to receive some grace from God or else I it would have been a hard landing .Like some one else said get a safety harness .Learn how to use it and use it like your life depends on it .They have some draw backs but so does a broken leg arm or back .We are out hunting because of our love of the outdoors So we should at least like ourselves enough to want to keep enjoying what we are doing

Saw this one this morning!




Sad to say, I've climbed in worse decades ago.
Also, left my nipples smeared 20' down a pine when my homemade Baker style with seatbelts for boot loops slipped off my feet. Good bit of forearm meat too!

I had a three day weekend. So I planned to hunt the whole weekend. All three days I saw a white truck parked next to the woods, every morning and evening. I thought, man! That’s one hunting dude. What I found out latter. He feel out of his stand and was dead at the bottom of the tree.