Well I was spending some quality time in a northern MO deer stand last night when our worst fears came true for me. I was watching a couple of does work a cut corn fiels about 5:20 when all of the sudden my feet fell out of underneath me. I had NO WARNING,NO IDEA thatI was goingdown until it happened. I heard a loud POP, and then before I knew what was going on I was hanging harmlessly 23 feet in the air as my stand went crashing down. It took me a second to figure out what was going on, but I slowly turned around, grabbed the tree, found my steps and climbed back up the tree to retrieve my gear.
All I could think about at that point was "what went wrong." I weld my own stands and thought that maybe a bad weld busted, my strap ripped, a hook just slipped off. I really had no idea so I hurried down the side of the tree and inspected everything. I found that one of my hardened steel hooks just snapped!!!!! These are the 2" straps that come in 20' lengths and one just snapped!!!!! I weigh 260 and these things are supposed to have a break strength of thousands of pounds!!!!
So I looked up the tree to whereI was and the scariest thing of it all is that i would of been poked and gored by most all of my 14 tree steps that were directly below me. I always thought that I would feel myself falling and be able to "guide" a fall but let me tell you, I wouldn't have been able to scream before I would have had that first tree step catch my ribs.
I have been bowhunting for 16 years. Of course I am not one to preach, everyone is entitled to their own thoughts. But I will say that the extra 2 minutes that it took for me to slip the harness (Seat-o-the-pants brand) saved me alot of pain, and possibly my life. I just bought it this year and have used one a majority of the time for the past 5 years, but nowI will never leave home without it.

BOB