OK no rebukes for me on not wearing my safety harness please... I had one but, believe it or not it shrunk the day before opening day when I washed it... [:@]
I was climbing a tree with my stand. I have the typical climber stand: you move the footing part of the stand, secure it move the seat & arm part and repeat. Well I had chosen a tree that had an incline on it which makes climbing VERY difficult when the incline is towards you. Well, long story short, I lost my footing and there went my bottom section. As for me I had a hold of my top section pretty well. Now, how or why, I couldn' t tell you... but I just sort of lost my head (about 20ft. up or more, above a steep hill that would have been HELL to land on) and was looking up at my grip or at the tree. Seeing no solution in sight, not within range of other hunter friends... 5 mins must have gone by and I finally looked down and much to my suprise the SAFETY LINE that I had used to tie the top and bottom sections together had caught the bottom piece... and perfectly according to plan it was there dangling just within reach of my foot to reach and pull it up

wasn' t funny at the time... but looking back I think about what on earth was I spacing about and why didnt' I look down. I dangled there for so long unnecessarily!

What should we all have learned!? Tree stand safety!