Lone Wolf Climbing Stand Field Report
01-01-2003, 09:04 AM
#1
Fork Horn
Thread Starter
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: Goodyear AZ US
Posts: 215
Lone Wolf Climbing Stand Field Report
Before you go giving any value to my opinions you should probably know a thing or two about me. Born & raised in WV, bowhunting since the age of 15 (39 now). Air Force F-16 pilot by trade currently living in AZ. Never arrowed a P&Y buck but rarely get skunked for the season. Most of my hunting is in WV during the rut.
Without further delay:
LONE WOLF ALPHA HAND CLIMBER
Stats:
Price: $249 (Autumnchase)
Weight measured at 15.5lbs.
Platform 191/2 x 30 (rated to 300lbs)
Seat/Climber 13x16
These are the things I think are important about a treestand, in no particular order: portability, quietness, usability, stability, comfort, cost, looks, ruggedness/durability. I’ll evaluate them all. First a few pics.
Here’s the front with the stand in the travel configuration.
The back.
And the side view.
Cost: Not a cheap stand. I got a good deal from Autumnchase but their prices are different now. The stand lists for $289 on the Lone Wolf web site and typically go for around $260-270 (plus shipping) on ebay although you don’t see them on there that much. The stand comes with a bungee used for holding the seat to the base when transporting, wraps around your feet when climbing and secures the seat strap to the tree when you’re at height and all set up. Also included are some instructions, backpack straps and a thick foam seat pad with Velcro straps to fasten it to the seat frame.
Portability: The hallmark of Lone Wolf stands. Hands down the easiest stand to strap onto an ATV or your back. About 3 inches deep when collapsed and secured. The included backpack straps were of minimalist design, no pads or moving parts just two straps woven through some holes in the base and an adjustable buckle on each one. On your back the tops of the traction belts are about even with your head and the bottom of the stand is a little lower than your belt (I couldn’t kick it with my heel). They could have included a little extra webbing on each strap. I loosened the straps to nearly the end to make it easy to get my arms through with heavy winter clothing then synched them tight for packing once it was on my back. I’m 5’10” 165lbs, if you’re 6’4” 260lbs you might have a little trouble getting your arms through with heavy clothing. You could easily extend the straps with your own webbing but Lone Wolf could make your life much easier by making the straps another foot long.
The stand alone on my back felt like nothing. This is somewhat different than it feels when you pick it up with your hands. My cousin was checking out the stand and commented that “It doesn’t feel that light” while he was holding it with one hand (like to see him try that with his Loggy). I told him to put it on and he was immediately amazed at how the weight disappeared. The stand is flat on the bottom with large holes all over and no hint of ergonomic shaping to contour your back. That being said I walked for 45 minutes one day in thin clothing scouting for a new location and the stand never irritated me or wore a sore on my back. I had some hot spots now and again but nothing I couldn’t get rid of with a shrug of my shoulders.
I took my Camelback Mule and strapped it onto the back of the Lone Wolf which added some weight but at least I had water, food and other gear. My furthest stand location was about a 25-30 minute walk which I made several times in the dark carrying stand and bow. I’m not going to say it was easy cause it was a pain in the keyster. What I will say is that this stand made it possible for me to do that. I only had one stand but my morning and evening hunting areas were in separate areas so for the most part I schlepped this stand and my bow in and out each morning and evening for two weeks. The other nice thing is that the stand doesn’t catch on limbs and such anymore than my own arms and legs. It’s also out of the way enough that I never banged my bow on it stepping over logs, pushing through brush, slipping in the snow or crossing a barb-wire fence. All in all the strongest point of the stand.
Quietness: Once it’s collapsed and secured it doesn’t clack or make noise when you carry it. The traction belts are basically rubber with steel cables running through them so bumping them is quiet as well unlike stands that use V-bars or chains. Here’s a detail picture of the belts.
Once you get to the tree, separating the climber from the stand you’ll make a “clink” or two if you’re not careful. Opening the stand up and attaching it to the tree is silent. To open the stand, loosen the two thumbwheels and pull up the support arms. The thumbwheels slide up into a notch machined into the support arms where you tighten them down to lock it in place. The thumbwheels are big enough to use in heavy winter gloves. Heres a picture of the thumbwheel mechanism in the down/travel position.
Heres a picture of it up and locked as when you’re climbing.
(In the picture above you can see the area you hook your feet into when climbing as recommended in the Lone Wolf brochure. I'll talk more about that later)
When you close the cam locks on the treebelt you can make a clunk if you’re rushing but your hand is around the entire cam lock and belt so it deadens it out. If you close it slowly it wont make a sound. Here’s a picture of the camlock (although I think the one on their web site is better).
There is nothing on this stand but you to make noise when climbing or descending. The platform is so light that you can easily maneuver it up and down the tree without banging it around. Once I settled in at height, the base of the stand never made a sound and I tried. Standing on one corner with one foot then shifting all my weight to the opposite corner and every combination thereof. The seat never made a sound either as long as you didn’t try to collapse it against the tree when you stood up. You don’t need to, there’s plenty of room on the platform but if you do collapse it don’t do it with a deer inside 30 yards. You must secure the belt of the seat to the tree with a bungee or it will slip down the tree when you collapse it. Here’s a picture of the seat.
If you can imagine a tree through there (sorry, I live in Arizona & I wasn’t about to wrap this thing around a cactus) you can see that when you fold the seat up against the tree it will move down a little even when the tree-belt is secured to the tree by a bungee. If you’re nice and careful you can do this pretty quietly but it wont be drop dead silent. The seat pad rests against the tree when you collapse it but the seat doesn’t stay perfectly flat against the tree, it leans out a little just enough to annoy me.
Usability: Very simple to operate. No weird geometry to fold the thing up and get it ready to carry. The best thing is there is no disassembly, pins to clip in/out etc. The seat/climber arms pivot about 135 degrees and butt up against some stops that keep them in that position, fully collapsed the arms are parallel with the seat edge. I’ve already talked about how the base opens up in the previous section. I always carry a light with me but I rarely use it and putting this stand up or down in the dark was a breeze.
The literature says it fits trees up to 19 inches in diameter, I never measured any but I’ve never come across a tree I wanted up in and couldn’t get there.
When climbing you can use the bungee to lock in your heels or you can hook your toes under the side supports and lift from there without the bungee on your feet. Using the bungee to lock in my heels pulls my feet towards the tree and my toes tend to rub the tree a little on the way up. Not a problem on slick bark trees but I was hunting in some wild cherry trees that have brittle curly bark and I had to be careful not to make noise by scraping the bark off with my toes. The literature recommends extending your feet under the side supports and securing the seat and platform together with the bungee incase it slips off. I never tried that, I just like having that thing attached securely to my feet. I did have my harness secured to the seat/climber though.
The seat/climber is plenty wide enough to rest your elbows and forearms on it to hunch over and pull your feet up when climbing. This obviously requires more physical exertion than say a seated climber would but nothing I would call difficult. I have a 25 ft bow rope and I take it up to the end every time. When I got to the top I wasn’t panting or sweating and had no noticeable fatigue in my arms or shoulders. I labored over the decision to get this type of climber over the sit & climb from Lone Wolf and the 4 extra pounds it would add to the weight of the stand versus being able to climb a little easier. I’m glad I made the choice I did cause it’s really not an issue.
The belts grip the tree pretty well but of course not quite like a “V” blade. Then again this stand doesnt damage the tree, if that's of concern. Of all the times I climbed up and down season I had a few minor slips and they were all from me being in a rush, cold or both. This is no different than any other stand I’ve used, no better no worse. At 39 it’s finally sinking in, slow down, get there faster. The belts are polyurethane, they’re not floppy up and down so they maintain their shape when you’re climbing but are soft enough to form to any irregular shape of the tree.
One nice feature of the stand is the bow holder built into the stand. It does not come with the rubber grommet, an extra for $10. That is money well spent cause there is no way you’ll get your bow in or out of that thing quietly without it. With the grommet putting the bow in or getting it out is silent. The bow rests in the holder leaning forward with the bulk of the weight resting on the limbs. It didn’t seem to put any undue stress on the bow and the bow wouldn’t flop left or right much at all, pretty secure. If I sat in the seat and leaned forward with my elbows on my knees the string of my bow was right at my fingertips. When I sat up with my back against the tree I would lean the bow back (still in the holder) and rest it on my leg so I could get to it easily.
Stability: Reference the previous section on quietness. I put my weight on every corner of the stand front and back and carried on with some pretty silly antics, all from just a foot off the ground, to give this stand the once over before I used it for hunting. It was as rock solid as any API, Loggy or Summit I’ve used/owned. I jumped on the back edge of the stand to get it to slip down and it just dug in the tree (I have it a hug and said sorry). The teeth on the edge of the stand bite really well and the polyurethane belts grip like a glove.
Comfort: It’s not a tree lounge and it doesn’t have arm rests, shooting rests, foot rests or a cup holder but I did like the seat. I can take or leave arm rests. They’re nice for sitting to rest your shoulders and hangin things off of but they usually get in the way of me or my bow eventually and always at the wrong time. I spend most of my time sitting back against the tree or elbows on my knees.
The foam pad for the seat (included) was remarkably soft. I’ll give it a comfy keyster coefficient of 4 (four hours of solid sitting before my arse wanted a break). The seat size is plenty for anyone under the 300lb weight limit of the stand and you can adjust the angle of it by simply adjusting the traction belt in or out. The really nice thing about the pad is it doesn’t absorb water. I always left my stand outside over night and never covered it. It rained for three straight days (then it snowed), I never used a hot seat or anything between me and the seat pad. I didn’t like the rain gear I had so I used a tree mounted umbrella instead and I never got a wet butt from the stand. I was sure that eventually that thing would get me with a wet butt, but it never did. If you compared treestands to hotels, the Tree Lounge would be a Marriott and the Lone Wolf would be Motel 6 (of course at Marriott prices).
Durability/Ruggedness: Because I’ve only had the stand for two years I cant say with any credibility that it’s durable. I can tell you it’s not showing any signs of wear. I’d expect the seat pad to get thin eventually and I’ll have to replace it ($14). It says in the brochure you’re supposed to change the traction belts every couple years ($15). Mine are in good condition and I don’t plan on replacing them until next year. All the hardware is hefty enough to suit me and all the nuts are locknuts of course.
Looks: It looks like I’ve rambled waaaaaaaay too much about a treestand. If you travel a lot, tend to move your stand fairly often, like to hit remote areas off the beaten path and want a climbing treestand that wont break your back then the Lone Wolf Alpha Handclimber is a great choice. Other alternatives in the same market niche are the Timbertall Baby lite and the Summit Bushmaster. For me the Timbertall was too expensive and didn’t pack well, the Bushmaster was the right price but again didn’t pack well. Lone Wolf put it all together for me.
Lone Wolf Alpha Hand Climber
http://www.lonewolfstands.com/alphah...5&dolPrice=289
Timbertall Baby Lite
http://www.timbertalloutdoors.com/babylite.htm
Summit Bushmaster
http://www.summitstands.com/summit02...STER%20XLS.htm
Cargo
Without further delay:
LONE WOLF ALPHA HAND CLIMBER
Stats:
Price: $249 (Autumnchase)
Weight measured at 15.5lbs.
Platform 191/2 x 30 (rated to 300lbs)
Seat/Climber 13x16
These are the things I think are important about a treestand, in no particular order: portability, quietness, usability, stability, comfort, cost, looks, ruggedness/durability. I’ll evaluate them all. First a few pics.
Here’s the front with the stand in the travel configuration.
The back.
And the side view.
Cost: Not a cheap stand. I got a good deal from Autumnchase but their prices are different now. The stand lists for $289 on the Lone Wolf web site and typically go for around $260-270 (plus shipping) on ebay although you don’t see them on there that much. The stand comes with a bungee used for holding the seat to the base when transporting, wraps around your feet when climbing and secures the seat strap to the tree when you’re at height and all set up. Also included are some instructions, backpack straps and a thick foam seat pad with Velcro straps to fasten it to the seat frame.
Portability: The hallmark of Lone Wolf stands. Hands down the easiest stand to strap onto an ATV or your back. About 3 inches deep when collapsed and secured. The included backpack straps were of minimalist design, no pads or moving parts just two straps woven through some holes in the base and an adjustable buckle on each one. On your back the tops of the traction belts are about even with your head and the bottom of the stand is a little lower than your belt (I couldn’t kick it with my heel). They could have included a little extra webbing on each strap. I loosened the straps to nearly the end to make it easy to get my arms through with heavy winter clothing then synched them tight for packing once it was on my back. I’m 5’10” 165lbs, if you’re 6’4” 260lbs you might have a little trouble getting your arms through with heavy clothing. You could easily extend the straps with your own webbing but Lone Wolf could make your life much easier by making the straps another foot long.
The stand alone on my back felt like nothing. This is somewhat different than it feels when you pick it up with your hands. My cousin was checking out the stand and commented that “It doesn’t feel that light” while he was holding it with one hand (like to see him try that with his Loggy). I told him to put it on and he was immediately amazed at how the weight disappeared. The stand is flat on the bottom with large holes all over and no hint of ergonomic shaping to contour your back. That being said I walked for 45 minutes one day in thin clothing scouting for a new location and the stand never irritated me or wore a sore on my back. I had some hot spots now and again but nothing I couldn’t get rid of with a shrug of my shoulders.
I took my Camelback Mule and strapped it onto the back of the Lone Wolf which added some weight but at least I had water, food and other gear. My furthest stand location was about a 25-30 minute walk which I made several times in the dark carrying stand and bow. I’m not going to say it was easy cause it was a pain in the keyster. What I will say is that this stand made it possible for me to do that. I only had one stand but my morning and evening hunting areas were in separate areas so for the most part I schlepped this stand and my bow in and out each morning and evening for two weeks. The other nice thing is that the stand doesn’t catch on limbs and such anymore than my own arms and legs. It’s also out of the way enough that I never banged my bow on it stepping over logs, pushing through brush, slipping in the snow or crossing a barb-wire fence. All in all the strongest point of the stand.
Quietness: Once it’s collapsed and secured it doesn’t clack or make noise when you carry it. The traction belts are basically rubber with steel cables running through them so bumping them is quiet as well unlike stands that use V-bars or chains. Here’s a detail picture of the belts.
Once you get to the tree, separating the climber from the stand you’ll make a “clink” or two if you’re not careful. Opening the stand up and attaching it to the tree is silent. To open the stand, loosen the two thumbwheels and pull up the support arms. The thumbwheels slide up into a notch machined into the support arms where you tighten them down to lock it in place. The thumbwheels are big enough to use in heavy winter gloves. Heres a picture of the thumbwheel mechanism in the down/travel position.
Heres a picture of it up and locked as when you’re climbing.
(In the picture above you can see the area you hook your feet into when climbing as recommended in the Lone Wolf brochure. I'll talk more about that later)
When you close the cam locks on the treebelt you can make a clunk if you’re rushing but your hand is around the entire cam lock and belt so it deadens it out. If you close it slowly it wont make a sound. Here’s a picture of the camlock (although I think the one on their web site is better).
There is nothing on this stand but you to make noise when climbing or descending. The platform is so light that you can easily maneuver it up and down the tree without banging it around. Once I settled in at height, the base of the stand never made a sound and I tried. Standing on one corner with one foot then shifting all my weight to the opposite corner and every combination thereof. The seat never made a sound either as long as you didn’t try to collapse it against the tree when you stood up. You don’t need to, there’s plenty of room on the platform but if you do collapse it don’t do it with a deer inside 30 yards. You must secure the belt of the seat to the tree with a bungee or it will slip down the tree when you collapse it. Here’s a picture of the seat.
If you can imagine a tree through there (sorry, I live in Arizona & I wasn’t about to wrap this thing around a cactus) you can see that when you fold the seat up against the tree it will move down a little even when the tree-belt is secured to the tree by a bungee. If you’re nice and careful you can do this pretty quietly but it wont be drop dead silent. The seat pad rests against the tree when you collapse it but the seat doesn’t stay perfectly flat against the tree, it leans out a little just enough to annoy me.
Usability: Very simple to operate. No weird geometry to fold the thing up and get it ready to carry. The best thing is there is no disassembly, pins to clip in/out etc. The seat/climber arms pivot about 135 degrees and butt up against some stops that keep them in that position, fully collapsed the arms are parallel with the seat edge. I’ve already talked about how the base opens up in the previous section. I always carry a light with me but I rarely use it and putting this stand up or down in the dark was a breeze.
The literature says it fits trees up to 19 inches in diameter, I never measured any but I’ve never come across a tree I wanted up in and couldn’t get there.
When climbing you can use the bungee to lock in your heels or you can hook your toes under the side supports and lift from there without the bungee on your feet. Using the bungee to lock in my heels pulls my feet towards the tree and my toes tend to rub the tree a little on the way up. Not a problem on slick bark trees but I was hunting in some wild cherry trees that have brittle curly bark and I had to be careful not to make noise by scraping the bark off with my toes. The literature recommends extending your feet under the side supports and securing the seat and platform together with the bungee incase it slips off. I never tried that, I just like having that thing attached securely to my feet. I did have my harness secured to the seat/climber though.
The seat/climber is plenty wide enough to rest your elbows and forearms on it to hunch over and pull your feet up when climbing. This obviously requires more physical exertion than say a seated climber would but nothing I would call difficult. I have a 25 ft bow rope and I take it up to the end every time. When I got to the top I wasn’t panting or sweating and had no noticeable fatigue in my arms or shoulders. I labored over the decision to get this type of climber over the sit & climb from Lone Wolf and the 4 extra pounds it would add to the weight of the stand versus being able to climb a little easier. I’m glad I made the choice I did cause it’s really not an issue.
The belts grip the tree pretty well but of course not quite like a “V” blade. Then again this stand doesnt damage the tree, if that's of concern. Of all the times I climbed up and down season I had a few minor slips and they were all from me being in a rush, cold or both. This is no different than any other stand I’ve used, no better no worse. At 39 it’s finally sinking in, slow down, get there faster. The belts are polyurethane, they’re not floppy up and down so they maintain their shape when you’re climbing but are soft enough to form to any irregular shape of the tree.
One nice feature of the stand is the bow holder built into the stand. It does not come with the rubber grommet, an extra for $10. That is money well spent cause there is no way you’ll get your bow in or out of that thing quietly without it. With the grommet putting the bow in or getting it out is silent. The bow rests in the holder leaning forward with the bulk of the weight resting on the limbs. It didn’t seem to put any undue stress on the bow and the bow wouldn’t flop left or right much at all, pretty secure. If I sat in the seat and leaned forward with my elbows on my knees the string of my bow was right at my fingertips. When I sat up with my back against the tree I would lean the bow back (still in the holder) and rest it on my leg so I could get to it easily.
Stability: Reference the previous section on quietness. I put my weight on every corner of the stand front and back and carried on with some pretty silly antics, all from just a foot off the ground, to give this stand the once over before I used it for hunting. It was as rock solid as any API, Loggy or Summit I’ve used/owned. I jumped on the back edge of the stand to get it to slip down and it just dug in the tree (I have it a hug and said sorry). The teeth on the edge of the stand bite really well and the polyurethane belts grip like a glove.
Comfort: It’s not a tree lounge and it doesn’t have arm rests, shooting rests, foot rests or a cup holder but I did like the seat. I can take or leave arm rests. They’re nice for sitting to rest your shoulders and hangin things off of but they usually get in the way of me or my bow eventually and always at the wrong time. I spend most of my time sitting back against the tree or elbows on my knees.
The foam pad for the seat (included) was remarkably soft. I’ll give it a comfy keyster coefficient of 4 (four hours of solid sitting before my arse wanted a break). The seat size is plenty for anyone under the 300lb weight limit of the stand and you can adjust the angle of it by simply adjusting the traction belt in or out. The really nice thing about the pad is it doesn’t absorb water. I always left my stand outside over night and never covered it. It rained for three straight days (then it snowed), I never used a hot seat or anything between me and the seat pad. I didn’t like the rain gear I had so I used a tree mounted umbrella instead and I never got a wet butt from the stand. I was sure that eventually that thing would get me with a wet butt, but it never did. If you compared treestands to hotels, the Tree Lounge would be a Marriott and the Lone Wolf would be Motel 6 (of course at Marriott prices).
Durability/Ruggedness: Because I’ve only had the stand for two years I cant say with any credibility that it’s durable. I can tell you it’s not showing any signs of wear. I’d expect the seat pad to get thin eventually and I’ll have to replace it ($14). It says in the brochure you’re supposed to change the traction belts every couple years ($15). Mine are in good condition and I don’t plan on replacing them until next year. All the hardware is hefty enough to suit me and all the nuts are locknuts of course.
Looks: It looks like I’ve rambled waaaaaaaay too much about a treestand. If you travel a lot, tend to move your stand fairly often, like to hit remote areas off the beaten path and want a climbing treestand that wont break your back then the Lone Wolf Alpha Handclimber is a great choice. Other alternatives in the same market niche are the Timbertall Baby lite and the Summit Bushmaster. For me the Timbertall was too expensive and didn’t pack well, the Bushmaster was the right price but again didn’t pack well. Lone Wolf put it all together for me.
Lone Wolf Alpha Hand Climber
http://www.lonewolfstands.com/alphah...5&dolPrice=289
Timbertall Baby Lite
http://www.timbertalloutdoors.com/babylite.htm
Summit Bushmaster
http://www.summitstands.com/summit02...STER%20XLS.htm
Cargo
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