Read a post this morning by walters444hunt about having his tree stand stolen by somebody. The story reminded me of two of my treestands.

The first one my dad and I built back in the early 80's. It was heavy and big but I was able to climb a tree with it. Opening morning was on Thanksgiving. I carried the stand in, wrapped the stand around the tree and climbed up an hour before day break. About 8 or 9am another hunter came into the area and climbed a tree about 50 yards from me. I had to get down about 10:00am so we could go to my parents for the BIG T dinner. So I climbed down as quiet as I could, covered the stand over with branches and walked out away from the other hunter so as to not disturb him. I come back the next morning before daylight to find my stand gone. Talk about being ticked off. My motto for many years was..."there is honor among thieves...but not among bowhunters". Of course I know that is not true. There are bad apples in any group of people no matter who they are.

My second stand was a bear stand built between four trees. The stand was in a HOT bear area. My hunting partner and i had toted all the plywood, 2x4's, 2x6's and carpet up hill about a quarter of a mile to build this thing. It was our first stand and we were proud of it. One day Gary goes up there to hunt and the whole stand is on the ground. This stand measured probably 6'x6'. Some "idiots" had shot the stand out of the trees. Gary salvaged as much as he could and we built a better stand on the other side of the mountain.

So the question this morning is....have you had a stand stolen or destroyed by somebody? (I won't say by a hunter or activist so as to not start another war)

Happy Hunting
Reid