I was wondering if anyone has hunted elk out of a tree stand.I have found an area that has a lot of elk movement in drainige.They look to be passin through to water and bedding.The other area is in NW MT it is realy thick cover and I hunt it during rifle,the elk are always moving around but I can never get a shot.Dose anyone know of a good light weight stand thats easy to pack,say 2-3 miles.BBJ

With elk I' d like to be more mobile so I haven' t tried it. I guess if you had an absolute perfect situation it might work out. Sorry can' t recommend any.

I use an API Grand slam climber and it works very well. They weight about 25-30lbs, so it' d be good full pack to go 2-3 miles, but not unreasonable. The stand is really comfortable and I can sit in it for hours and hours without getting a sore butt. There are alot of stands out there, that are lighter and you might can get one down in the 20lb range if you yourself are not a really big person. Most of the light climbers are rated for 250 lbs where the heavier ones are usually rated for up around 350lbs. API also gives you a free body harness which is much nicer than the belly straps that come with some other stands. No matter which brand you go with, I' d make sure of two things:
Get one with a cable or chain climbing system. There are stands that use a boomerang shaped piece of metal to go around the tree. These are clunky to put on the tree and noisy to climb with.
Get a stand that has the hammock style seat with a backrest. Some stands have a rigid board seat with a pad and it' s hard to stay still for a long time when your arse is numb. Price range for a good stand with a comfy seat is going to be $150-200

I know two guys that used them. Both said they thought it worked well, both shot a nice bulls out of them. Each tried them for two years and then bagged it, even though they had success using them.

The benefits of being mobile outweighed any advantage they gained from being in the treestand for each of them, and they lived very far from their hunting areas so had to pack it in and out every time they left or returned to their hunting area.

They both put them up in the corridor between night time grazing areas and daytime bedding areas. They sat in the tree stand and blew their cow call once or twice every half hour and used cow scent below them around the tree.
Both called lone bulls right to their tree just before dark (in different areas on different hunts).
I remember well how much fun it was packing those bulls out in the dark through the deadfall. That is when a GPS would pay for itself, unfortunately we did not have one.