Crazy treestand stories!

OK, every hunter has a crazy story about an experience or two that they have had while hunting out of a treestand. Anything from what you have seen, to the climb up, to the climb down, near falls, what you woke up to see (HAHA), etc. Share yours here:

I have had a few but the one that comes to mind actually involved my buddy Jack (username Jackhammer). We were both hunting a pinch point about 40 yards from eachother.

We both had climbers. I climbed up my tree about 25 feet. I look over and see that Jack is about half way up his tree. Jack soons stops climbing. He decides that his platform has too much of a tilt on it and he needs to level it out. Mind you at this time, he has an older cheaper brand climber without the front climbing bar to support his weight. Before I know it Jack is laying across the top part of the climber (superman style) and is reaching down to undo te cable for the platform. Well, he gets the cable undone and instead of it going to the next notch, it comes completely out. At this time I am starting to worry. Jack is a pretty big guy and treestands are not made to support that much weight in with a person laying across them. Soon his platform slides all the way down. Now Jack is puling on the cord that connects the two and is trying to raise the platform up to where he can reach it, unsuccessfully.

At this point I know that I have two choices comfortably sit in my stand and think about how I am going to tell Jacks wife the terrible news, or climb down and help my friend. Long story short, I decided to climb down. I unhooked my climber from me tree and and hooked it up tp hs and climbed up and helped him get his platform hooked back up securely. Boy, was I glad that his climber top did not give out when I was making my way up his tree. That would have been a big headache. Well, it all worked out and I am glad it is something we can joke about now. I hope I never have to do it again, but I will in a heartbeat for anyone else who needs a hand.

Long story short...Autumn and I climb into our double man, get set tp, and settle in before sun up. Just as it was getting light enough to barely see, we hear all heck come tearing through the woods. It was coming in our direction. As it got closer I could see it was 5 coons running. I put my bow back on the bow holder and hear Autumn say "one is climbing up to us." I was like wonderful. I lean over the gaurd rail and see a big ole coon half way up the tree. I lean over it and spit (I did not want to make a lot of noise for obvious reasons) and it landed on the coons head. It stopped climbing, looked up at me, and started hissing like a cat. I kinda laughed. Never heard one hiss. Had them bark at me before but never hiss. Anyways, he climbed down and they gang went along their way.

great stories guys Funny but glad everything turned out ok


This happened to me last year i was in a ladder stand and i needed to pee

so i stood up and started to releave myself no sonner than it started hitting the ground a little bird flew down and landed right in it and started bathing its self(crazy bird) and when i was done the bird just stood there like it was read for the next rain to come. Craziest thing ive ever seen

Probably, the funniest thing I saw was one morning I was sitting in a tree and a young fox squirrel ate a mushroom near me. Right after that, the mushroom kicked in (I always wondered what hippes got out of smoking them) and he completely freaked out. Was running up trees about 4 feet and cutting backflips out of them and chattering the whole time. Then it would take off running and roll across the leaves. Was hilarious...right up to the point where the little rascal started climbing "my" tree. Then I was a little worried about the outcome. It turned out ok though.

TheRomer wrote:

so i stood up and started to releave myself no sonner than it started hitting the ground a little bird flew down and landed right in it and started bathing its self(crazy bird) and when i was done the bird just stood there like it was read for the next rain to come. Craziest thing ive ever seen

I am rollling after reading that one. Classic.

It was craxy, one evening while it was approching dark I thought I heard a splat sound a short way behind me. Then as I was turning around slowly in my stand, splat! A flying squirl splated on the oppasit fork of the tree I was in 2 foot from my face. It startled me so much I almost fell off my platform.

Oh, I am liking these stories.... Keep them coming!

These are good.. I will think of one. I know one member on here.. AKA sgtslaughter while hunting hogs, had a visitor in his ground blind. .... It was a Rattle snake!

I was hunting Illinois two years back. I got to go into a place that hasn't been hunted in years. They offered me a Lone Wolf hand climber. I had never used one so it was slow going. Well as I am about 7 feet up I see a huge, wide 8-pointer. I freaked as I needed to get to my bow. My climbing was so slow I just could not move fast enough. I decided to do a front flip off the treestand so I was hanging. I then dropped to the ground to get my bow and proceeded to call him but it did not work out. So now I turn around and look at my tree and my stand is high enough over my head I cannot reach it. I was finally able to climb the tree, get into my stand and get set up. For a minute I thought I messed up jumping down without my stand.

LOL great stories guys

I was hunting at one of my farms in the pre rut and I was in the stand mid day. I was rattiling like crazy trying to coax an old big boy in and here come this four point running in like he owned the place. I watched him rub a couple trees and stomp around like he was a bad dude. As he was walking away he crossed my trail where I had walked in, he followed it all the way back to my tree and was smelling up the tree but he still never saw me. And on top of that I had dropped my bow rope back down to the ground after I got in my stand and he was gettin all tangled in it. He finally got out of the predicament and left without ever knowing I was there.
I also fell asleep one time in stand to wake up to leaves rustling. I looked and there was a squirrel right under me so I decided it was his unlucky day. I shot at him with my bow and he took off and I kept watching him as he ran off thinking to myself, there is something funny looking about that squirrel. I got down shortly to retrieve my arrow and there was his tail laying there . Whoops

That poor squirel is now known to the fellow creatures of the wilderness as "Nubs" or "Stubby".

these story are great guys i will have to try and think of some crazy stuff that has happened to me

Friday night, my buddy Gabe and i decide to hunt together Saturday morning on a bench we had found couple weeks before. Saturday morning roles around and i wake up feeling like crap. Hit the snooze button and go back to sleep. I awake after the 9th missed phone call from Gabe asking me where i was at. So i get my stuff on and head out the door meet up with Gabe and tell him i do not feel very well. He says well maybe a nice 10 pt in the back of your truck will put a little pep in your step. I agreed and headed out with him to our location.
We had found a nice bench weeks before. With the wind blowing in the perfect direction, we could both hunt the bench one on either side. We were probably 60 70 yards apart.
So we start heading up our trees with the climbers. I get everything set up and as soon as i sat down, i knew i was not going to be able to stay awake. My head was pounding and i had a temp of 101 (Medexpress after the hunt). No more than 5 minutes in the tree, i fall asleep in my climber.
Well we all know that felling when you are sleeping and it feels like someone is watching you. Well i wake up and i have a herd of doe standing in front of me and 2 doe tags in my bag. There was nothing i could do. I dont know if i was snoring moving or what, but they were looking right at me when i opened my eyes. When i moved my stiff neck from sleeping in the tree for 45 minutes they all spoked and ran off.
So i am thinking hopefully Gabe did not see me sleeping in the tree cause i will never hear then end of this hunting adventure. I get up and grab my binoculars and look towards Gabe and he is looking through his right at me. Kind of like the movie Sniper when they look through their scopes and communicate to each other. We did exactly that... He put the binoculars down and put his arms up in the air like what happend. I waited for him to look at me and i put my hands together and laid my head on them acting like i was sleeping and he started pointing at me and laughing...haha...never hear the end that hunting trip....good times good times.

Not as good a turn out or humorous as above, I wrote this a few years ago..

Tree Stand Safety
The Time I Fell From a Tree Stand
By Mike “Arrowslinger” Richey

Mid November in South Carolina is a great time for a bow hunter, the morning air has chilled from the north winds, but the mid-day temperatures still climb to the mid seventies. Flying insects are down to almost zero, and most important the bucks are working the does hard.

This week I happened to have Monday and Tuesday off and I was excited knowing not many bow hunters would be in the local public area. I awoke that Monday morning to a calm wind and a temperature of forty-five degrees. The weather forecast for the day was calm wind and a high temperature of sixty-nine degrees, a fantastic day for hunting.
The day before my girlfriend at the time had went to spend a few days with her mother and would not return until the following Friday. I knew in my mind I should have called my brother or hunting partner and let them know where I was going and for them to call the house and check with me at dark. As I dialed the phone I could hear myself saying; "It's only five miles away, and you have been there before," like a dummy I hung up the phone and started gathering my gear.

I got to the area around 5 AM the sky was just starting to lighten a bit and to my joy I saw no other vehicles along the roadside. I loaded up my gear and started the two-mile walk to the swamp, where a week before I watched two huge eight points battle it out. I knew if I could get into the tree and still before seven a.m. I would have a good chance at a nice deer.
I got to the tree, as it just was light enough to see well, I bolted on my climber then attached my bow and pack to my rope hoist. The tree I chose was a tall pine, I estimated the height to the first limb to be about forty feet, I decided to climb up to where when I stood up in the stand I would be about thirty five feet high. I elected to just put my safety belt around my waist and not the tree; pine bark is really difficult to maneuver a safety belt over while climbing. This was to be my biggest mistake of the day.
I started my climb with no problems, I stopped about mid way up to rest a bit and watch two squirrels battle over a nut. After a few minutes I resumed my climb, I got to the point where I knew I could see down to the bank of the swamp. I stood up facing the tree and like an idiot did not take the time to wrap the safety belt (which was around my waist!) to the tree.

I turned around and stepped out from the tree, as I started to bend to get the rope hoist I got this sick feeling in my stomach, I could feel the stands platform shift to the forward right. The sick feeling came as I realized it would not stop, as my upper torso passed through the hand climber I tried to grab it to no avail. I was going to the ground and there was nothing I could do to prevent it! Have you ever been witness to a car accident and noticed how things appear to be going in slow motion? This is how I perceived my fall, I knew it was happening and that it was going to hurt, but it seemed as if it took forever to hit the ground!

I felt the most unbelievable searing pain as I finally did hit the ground; I landed feet first on pretty solid ground and lost consciousness for maybe a minute? I came too with my legs in a pain I have never known, I was laying on my right side with my face firmly in the ground. All I wanted to do was be VERY still each breath I took seemed to increase the pain I was in. After about fifteen minutes I became extremely thirsty, I did have a frozen water bottle in my pack, but as I raised my head to look, I saw it was a few feet away. After about a half hour the pain numbed a bit, I pulled myself to my pack and retrieved the water from it, I also saw the bottle of Advil I had bought a week earlier for a headache I had gotten on another trip. I popped nine or ten of the Advil and gulped down about half of the water, then decided to lay still awhile longer.

About an hour later the pain had numbed enough so that I could turn myself over, I rolled over which put my shoulder blade against the tree I had fell from. Looking up I could see the platform of the stand bent downward and got the full vision of just how I fell. I then looked down my left leg, my pants leg sticking up in the middle of my shin, told me just how serious this fall had been. There was a bit of blood soaked through, but not bad from the looks of it, the right leg was hurting badly but nothing sticking out of it, that I could see.
I had no watch on, but guessed the time to be about 9 AM. I fought the urge off to look at the wound to my left leg; afraid this may cause me to panic. I thought to myself, "okay here you are, two miles from the main road seriously injured. No one knows where you are and it's a weekday" The only thing I could do was to yell for help and hope someone heard me. For the next few hours I yelled help three or four times about every ten minutes about noon I had become very hoarse and drank most of the water that was left.

I closed my eyes and concentrated on things other than my pain, I fought myself from dropping off to sleep, fearing no one would find me. The pain started to increase again; I popped seven or eight more of the Advil and swallowed the last of the water. I then started my yelling again, as I would be quiet to listen for a response I began to hear what I thought were responses? I think it may have been voices carrying through the hills from a construction site five or six miles away?

I have to be honest and say I really did not become scared until about three p.m. that's when the thought of maybe dying set in. The temperature that night would drop to near freezing and a rain shower was expected, I knew I had to now yell as loud as I could. I then began screaming help, as loud as I could possibly do it. Later the sun started to set behind the trees, and I had become hoarse again, I would swallow hard then repeat the yell. Out of the blue I hear "WHERE ARE YOU!" I thought I was dreaming for a second, I yelled back "DOWN THE RAVINE JUST OFF THE TRAIL, NEAR THE SWAMP!" The two hunters came right to me after that, boy were they great to see, one gave me water while the other looked over my legs. Then one ran to call an ambulance while the other talked with me, but just as the one guy ran off he yelled back, "SEE BILL I TOLD YOU I HEARD SOMEONE A FEW HOURS AGO!" I had to grit my teeth a bit and then realized I was just glad they had found me.

To make a long story short, about two months later I was back to normal and a bit wiser, I even hunted with Bill a few times the next year. Sadly he was killed in a non-hunting related accident later that year, I thank Bill in my memories most every day.

Wear those safety belts folks, not just when getting ready to hunt, but the entire time you're on the tree!!!

The lessons I learned:

• Use a safety belt the entire time your on the tree.
• Let someone know where you're hunting and when you plan to return.
• Stay calm, if something does happen.

Wow, Arrowslinger... You are very lucky. Thanks for taking the time to post that and then you for the reminders of what you learned. Glad everything worked out. Sorry to hear about the passing of Bill.

Great.

These stories are great. Probably the worst thing that has happened is the same thing that happened to jacvkhammer in Daves story. I spent about a half an hour trying to get it back up and around the tree again. I don't know how high jackhammer was but I was in the neighborhood of 20 -22 ft. Thank god the top held me becasue that would have been a long fall.

two years ago I was only about 14 feet up a tree as it was all the higher I could get and heard what I thought was a squirrel below me. I look down and it's a coon. He is coming up the tree and I don't want any part of this so I stand up and grab my bow and start trying to spook him by swinging the bow down at him. Well it only made him mad and he got all the way to my foot platform and was going to keep coming but my bow tapped him on the head and he hissed and ran down the tree. I wasn't so sure I wasn't going to have a fight on my hands

Dave wrote:

Wow, Arrowslinger... You are very lucky. Thanks for taking the time to post that and then you for the reminders of what you learned. Glad everything worked out. Sorry to hear about the passing of Bill.

Luck was indeed on my side, those steel pins in my leg on a cold day remind me

About 20 years ago I was bow hunting in a climbing stand about 24 feet off the ground. The stand had hardened rubber to grab the tree so it would not damage the tree. It started raining hard and the bark got slick and the next thing I know the stand is zipping down the tree like an amusment ride. Before I got to the ground the trunk got big enough to stop the stand in its tracts. It happened so fast there was not time to think what was going to happen. Now I stick to hanging stands and climbing sticks.

Monster Raxx wrote:

About 20 years ago I was bow hunting in a climbing stand about 24 feet off the ground. The stand had hardened rubber to grab the tree so it would not damage the tree. It started raining hard and the bark got slick and the next thing I know the stand is zipping down the tree like an amusment ride. Before I got to the ground the trunk got big enough to stop the stand in its tracts. It happened so fast there was not time to think what was going to happen. Now I stick to hanging stands and climbing sticks.

To each his own... for me I feel safer/more comfortable in my climber at 30 feet than I do in a hang on at 15 feet.

Several years ago I was hunting a nice oak flat that was isolated in the middle of a large pasture field, I had several good trail cam pics of some nice deer in these oaks in the mornings but also had got some pictures of some black angus cows too. I called the land owner the night before and he said he would have his son bring the cows into the small pasture beside the barn and good luck in the morning, I snuck into the woodlot well before daylight , found my tree and proceeded to climb up. Once I got settled into the tree I pulled my bow up and started waiting for daylight. As soon as it starting getting light I started hearing noise behind my tree, at first I thought it might be deer but when I heard the first "MOO" I quickly realized the landowners son had forgot to bring the cows in the night before, I figured I would make the best of it and see if the cows would make their way out of there, well they started moving out and was walking right past my tree when one heifer stopped right under my tree and was actually standing on the d-ring hooked to the bottom of my pull up rope, no big deal she will move on I thought, well while she is standing there she decides she needs to start eating my pull up rope, I decided I didn't need to explain to the farmer why one of his registered black angus heifers had 25 feet of rope in her gut so I grabbed my rope and started to pull it up real fast, she already had about a foot or so of rope in her mouth and all of a sudden it starts movin and "crawlin " out of her mouth! well needless to say she turned inside out and ended up causing a stampede out of the woodlot clear to the barn!! I decided to go ahead and climb down and call it a day since I didn't figure I would see any deer after the great stampede, I was just coming out of the woodlot when some of the braver cows had returned to investigate what caused the ruckus and found me!!! needless to say it was a tense walk back across that pasture! the landowner was out in the yard when I got back and had figured I had spooked the cattle but when he heard the whole story we both had a good laugh , he apologized and I told him not to worry about it, I had a good story to tell and had plenty of other days to hunt.

i had a guy who was mushroom hunting and was walking around the same hilltop as i was sitting on perched up 20 ft in the air...I had a fun time watching him pick shrooms and talk to himself for bout an hr and he never knew i was there.. Kinda funny to me.. Never saw a deer though LOL