Double-check your tree stand equipment before every hunt!
As hunters, we spend a ton of time thinking about our treestand setups. We spend hours agonizing over which tree to hang on, how the winds will hit it. We spend an even greater amount of time trimming out shooting lanes and thinking about the different shot opportunities we may get over the course of the hunt.
One thing that we may not think about enough is the equipment we are using in the treestand. Safety equipment is a huge concern of course, but we're talking about holders for your rifle or bow today. Because let's face it, most of us don't want to sit there with a rifle across our laps the whole hunt. Especially if you're hunting dawn to dusk.
That's where a good bow hanger comes into play. In this video, Kip with Red Arrow is about out of shooting light when he goes to put his bow back on the holder. What happens next is every hunter's nightmare as the bow goes crashing towards the ground from a failed bow holder!
If you didn't cringe a little bit from that bow hitting all those tree branches on the way down, we're guessing you've never hunted a treestand before. Fortunately for Kip, it sounds like the bow hung up about 12 feet from the ground before it could hit the hard earth and cause even more damage. We wish they would have showed how they got the bow down after that. It was probably an ordeal, especially in the dark.
We must agree, this would scare us too because it did sound like the treestand was giving way for a moment. If we must choose between the bow holder and our treestand failing, we'll go for the bow holder every time.
The lesson to be learned here is to always check your holders and hooks for all that expensive new equipment you acquired in the offseason. All it takes is a slight turn of the hook or a screw that's not in all the way and gravity will take over with your stuff and no one wants that. Let's hope his bow was unharmed in this incident!
For more outdoor content from Travis Smola, be sure to follow him on Twitter and check out his Geocaching and Outdoors with Travis YouTube channels.
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