Nato, It was an Ol' man treestand. Me and him both love these stand, we each have two ol man climbers. all but one are older models though. When he got up there that morning the top portion of the stand was rele unlevel so he fixed it while he was up there. Best we can tell when he put the pin back in to secure the cable around the tree he did not get the pin set correctly and as he was coming down the tree the pin slowly worked its way up till it came out. Its not the smartest thing in the world to do to try and do any adjustments to ur stand once your up the tree but im sure we have all done it and after hunting from a climber for more than 25 yrs i guess he just felt like it wasnt a big deal.