WARedBear

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

Justin

I've had stands stolen, treesteps stolen, bow holders stolen, and even the strap off my stand stolen. Ah yes, the joys of hunting the suburbs!!

gplant

I have had 4 stands stolen,steps.ropes,etc.Also had a gun shack destored once. Would love to catch them just one time.

bowhunter010

ive never had a tree stand stolen and im glad and its probably becasue i have my own hunting land on my farm and nobody else hunts it besides me.lol.

WakeCow

Yes I've hada treestand stolen,when I went back to the tree there was a different stand in it. So I just sat in that one for the night and the guy comes up you can imagine the exchange I had with him. But he denied stealing my stand I figured nobody would be that dumb to steal a stand out of a tree and put another one up in the same tree on private land.

sorry about the run on makes it hard to read but I am being lazy today

my7pointmonster

I did a post about it a long while ago, ive had a lot of stands stolen from me along with the people i hunt with, all i want is to catch them one time doing it to someones stand.... Its the worst feeling in the world when you show up to hunt and your stand is gone.
Ryan.

Rickmur

Yes a few.

Mr. Longbeard

Look at the bright sidebe thank full you still have a place to hang stands to get stolen

rankbull

I had something like this happen my first time in the woods with the exception that the guy came over and yelled at me for being to close to him. I have never stept foot back onto public land to this date.

WARedBear

I wasn't on public land...in fact I was on Federal land..Eglin AFB, FL. They had a small patch of woods at the end of the runway that was for archery hunters only. I saw the guys truck when I walked out and I almost took down the tag number but I didn't. Needless to say I never saw his truck again. I ended up hunting a friends permanent stand up a HUGE oak tree in the same general area. I took my first scrub oak from there. I have it mounted as my first bow kill.

Happy Hunting
Reid