3 years ago I had my steps stolen, and they had attempted to cut the lock, but were unsuccessful...so I took the stand down and locked it in my truck, scouted for another hour or so, returned to my truck and found my window smashed out and stand gone....couldn't win for losing that day. Since then I have used a climber stand....a little more work, but I only had to buy one!

I don't hunt from a stand so I don't know how you feel, but I do know that they are expensive, so sorry to hear about your loss.

Although I consider myself a pretty reasonable guy, I do have a bad temper in some instances. Tresspassing thieves are one of my triggers. I don't own any of the private land I use, but if I did, I would just stick with a climber. I know it's a pain getting it in and out, but I just can't stand having things stolen.

My hunting group uses bicycle locks on our stands and thats on private property. This past hunting season the landowner went for a hike on his property and found a brand new Ol Man climber sitting in an area that is used for a deer sanctuary...we don't even go anywhere near that area when we hunt. He was torn about repossessing it but just unattached it from the tree and left a nice note. Its a good thing the stand owner never ran into the landowner...to put it lightly there are probably 30 NFL teams that would love tohave him play DE for them and he looks like Lurch from the Adams family but with a moustache...

I am the exact same way sixer.......

I had the reverse problem , . .some guy put a tree stand up on my property , not 50 yds from where I have one up ! I now have it chained to a trr in my front yd waiting for the owner to claim it

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Ifferd the only drawback in using the hardened steel chains and locks is if some goofball breaks off a toothpick in your lock or otherwise disables it so you can't open the lock.

I had 2 ladder stands stole last fall, just so happened to be after the two farms were logged. I could not prove anything, but my intuition told me where they went, needless to say I will probably never see them again.
I know what you are saying VA, I also know how you feel, you don't know how bad I wanted to put dirt in the oil on the loggers skidders, but I figure it will come back around, plus if by some 1 in a billion chance it wasn't him, I would have felt awful bad.

I hunt out on public land, and I leave my treestand out there the whole hunting time. No one ever goes out there and I know about everyone that hunts there.