Each spring, just prior to turkey season, my buddies and I plan day trips to our whitetail properties. We spend part of our time hiking and looking for sheds, but our focus is treestand maintenance.
Specifically, we visit each one of our ladder stands and hang-on stands. On the ladders, we loosen the ratchet straps slightly so they don’t become overly tight as the tree grows during spring and summer. We also remove any foam seats so the squirrels don’t destroy them. When we re-visit the properties in late summer, we’ll tighten these straps, reinstall the foam seats, cut shooting lanes, etc.
Many of our hang-on stands also have seatbelt-style straps; some have ratchets and others have different ways of tightening the strap. Whatever the case, we either loosen the strap, or we can take pressure off it by raising the platform 90 degrees to the vertical position.
Some of our older hang–on stands are attached to a tree with a chain, and on those we will take pressure off the chain by hooking the stand on a chain link that’s a few links looser.
A few of our hang-on stands are accessed via screw-in tree steps, and we’ll back out those steps a turn or two so bark doesn’t grow around the step. We’ll turn them tightly back into the tree during our late-summer visit. On those stands where we used climbing sticks, we’ll either remove the sticks during our spring visit, or loosen those straps slightly.
During our late-summer visit, we’ll inspect all the straps, chains and other treestand components to ensure a stand is safe for deer season. As you’ll see in the Facebook video below, failure to loosen these securing straps can eventually lead to them breaking under the pressure of the tree growing. Not good!
Note: Be sure to turn up the volume on the video to hear the hunter's comments.
This hang-on stand was left in the tree so long that the bark is growing around the steel framework. The stand didn’t fall to the ground after the strap snapped. Thankfully a hunter didn’t step onto this stand in the darkness for a morning sit; the stand — and the hunter — would have fallen to the ground.
Be careful out there.
