Andrew14, I had the same thing happen to me a few years back. Some low life stole my steps but left my stand because it was locked to the tree. I did harvest a elk earlythat year, but I left3 stands upover water holes in different placesthrough the season for friends and family. I went back by myself the last weekend of the hunt to pull them down. I wasvery upset becausethe stand was packed in on my back 4 miles in. The treedidn't have enough limbs on it to climb up, and I didn't have any other tree steps on me.I had a choice of bear hugging the tree to climb it, trying to cut it downwith a dinky pack saw, or walking out 4 miles to get tree steps. I decided against better judgment to bear hug and climb the tree. I got the tree stand and myself down just fine other than a few scrapes. But looking back that was realy stupid on my part because if I fell it couldhave been aday or twobefore someone came for looking for me. On a better note this past fall my hunting partner and I got back to our camp and their was afolded up paper with a note tapped to a half empty 5 gallon gas can. It explained that they got lost andwere almost out of gas in their 4wheeler. They took three gallons but left $10 in the wrapped up in the paper. I wasn't mad what so ever and wish others would have the same concideration.