Fine Art of Tree Stand Building

I’ve mentioned before that my oldest daughter will be hunting deer with me this year. This situation has created a lot of joy as well as some potential adventures and stresses that are welcome. One of the less welcome changes is that, due to the situation; I will be pinned down to a specific way to hunt. I’ve never been in the school of hunting only one way. I believe that every hunt and every different place must be approached differently and uniquely. This tidbit of freedom to adapt and improvise my hunting techniques is, to me, the joy and definition what it means to be a “hunter”. However, on the bright side, using a stationary technique early will be beneficial to develop the discipline and patience it takes to hunt from a stand or stationary position all day. In the in the long run, this will make her a better stalker.

In the place I chose to take her, it looked like a tree stand was the best option. So, when we had the chance, we hit the woods to build. With tree stand options, permanent stands are only by permission and where no climbing stands will work. For rifle season, I like to build very small stands thirty feet off the ground minimum, in the most difficult place to get into, in order to avoid another person using my stand at an inconvenient time (during deer season). This was going to be impossible with an 11 year old hunter. She is probably a better climber than I am, but her mother has a lot of influence on what is determined as “possible vs. impossible” so a four square feet stand at thirty feet high, was “impossible”.

I’m aware that some hunters look “down” on stand hunting. This was explained to me at a young age like this: “A hunter that will hunt in a tree stand (as I defined) and can also hunt effectively on the ground, when situations dictate, is a deer hunter. Those hunters who look “down” on tree stand hunting, in all situations, are defined as “scared of heights”. So the first test of my daughter was to see if she was to become strictly a ground hunter. If that was the case, I thought I’d supply her with a feigned superiority complex over tree stand users. Fortunately, she passed her test of heights tolerance with flying colors, so I took her out with chainsaw and boards in hand to help build our stand.

This was to be the first two person stand I ever built. We scouted a spot that was naturally concealed from the casual view of a deer, in a place between their feeding and bedding area. We wanted such a spot within 25 to 100 yards from a heavily used intersection serving deer use areas. Then we narrowed our area to where the slope of the hill would conceal our noise and improve our acoustics, then moved to where the prevailing winds would not carry our scent to unsuspecting deer. After finding that spot, I showed her how it never has a tree useable for a stand. Then we moved on and settled for a tree nowhere near that proverbial “perfect place”. There, I commenced showing her how to build a stand, directly upwind of deer in their natural line of sight while the area’s acoustics sent the thudding of our hearts over two hundred yards away and, of course, was the perfect mosquito breeding grounds. There were a few other tidbits she picked up which caused some confusion in her ordinary life. I include here some of the questions that arose due to our stand building activities along with my defense to my inquisitor, Mrs. Crisp (MC), after we got back from our first tree standing building adventure.

MC-“Bill, our daughter says she doesn’t need to wear a helmet on the bicycle since you didn’t use one to fall out of a tree stand.” My defense, “Clearly, I showed her that a helmet is necessary unless you have a running chain saw to break your fall.”

MC-“Bill, our daughter is running around with nails in her mouth.” My defense, “I explained to her that it was dangerous to do that but necessary to get the first couple of boards in the tree. My toes were kind of full, keeping me hanging; one hand had a board and the other a hammer. My head was keeping pressure on the board and my elbow was balancing me. Maybe she didn’t understand what I was saying; my mouth was kind of full of nails when I was talking.

MC-“Bill, our daughter is using foul, four letter language every time something goes wrong.” My response: “Not from me. I clearly used a complete string of foul, four letter words every time something went wrong. I’ve have no idea why she thinks it is appropriate to use only one four letter word.”

MC-“Bill, our daughter is suddenly very concerned about you being in a tree with her.” My defense, “Oh, no one says anything about the fifteen Hail Mary’s I said before I climbed the tree and the hundred or so I said when I was in the tree.” Kids…

See you along the stream