You guys are cracking me up with these stories! They actually reminded me of a few incidents of my own that I had totally forgotten about. I'll try to give you folks the short version of probably my most memorable one.
It happened in 1984 while I was stationed at Fort Knox, Kentucky shortly before my first tour of duty in Germany. While I was on leave before departing for Germany, my younger brother and I decided to bow hunt Fort Campbell during October 1984. Back then they allowed you to bow hunt the two patches of woods between the Air Assault School obstacle course and the small arms ranges on Mabry Road. At that time, I had one of the first commercially available climbing tree stands on the market, an early Baker kit that you had to add your own plywood base to. I also had the hand climber that was sold separately from the foot platform, and it could double as a makeshift seat.
Now, to fully appreciate the gravity (pun intended) of the situation I later found myself in, all of you younger fellows need to understand that 40 years ago, commercially made tree stands were just beginning to appear on the market. They were such a new concept that no manufacturer had yet accumulated the experience necessary to know to attach a tether between the foot platform and the upper seat section (or hand climber) of climbing tree stands. Nor were commercially manufactured safety harnesses yet available as they are now. Even crude waist belts long enough to attach to a tree didn't begin appearing in most areas until the early 1990s. In other words, tree stand hunting 40 years ago was relatively dangerous and was nowhere near as safe as it is today. In hindsight, it is truly amazing that there weren't even more injuries and deaths than there actually were from tree stand accidents back then.
I can already hear the older guys in this group laughing because they already KNOW where this is going and what happened to me that day! I picked a fairly limbless tree and climbed up about 23-25 feet and got settled in. It was a really warm afternoon and for several hours the only movement was from multiple squadrons of mosquitoes the size of 747s. About an hour before dark, I heard movement behind me and turned around to look behind the tree. Excited with the possibility of seeing a deer, when I turned, my weight shifted, putting pressure on the foot platform closest to the tree trunk which caused it to slip and fall down the tree. Now here I was 25 feet up a tree clinging to that hand climber for dear life and wondering how I was going to get down out of that tree without falling and breaking my neck in the process!
I grabbed my bow, the original Bear Whitetail Hunter 6-wheel compound, and dropped it down on a nearby bush as carefully as possible to minimize the damage to it. At first, I began to slowly bear hug my way down the tree - imagine a 180-pound inch worm moving in reverse - while wishing I had paid more attention in gym class when I was younger. How many of you older guys have ever hugged a white oak on an express elevator going down at 40 miles per hour?
Needless to say, the bark on white oak trees is nowhere near as soft as what I previously believed it to be. My shirt sleeves were totally destroyed, and the insides of my arms were shredded pretty good by the time I finally reached the ground. More of my skin was on that tree than on my forearms at that point, but fortunately, the only other injury was to my pride. Miraculously, there was considerably less damage to my bow and the only thing I had to replace was the 3-pin bow sight. Looking up the tree I wondered how on earth I was going to get my hand climber down. I eventually decided to just leave it, and that Baker foot platform was donated to a trash bin soon afterwards.
Ironically, after leaving Germany a little over three years later, I was reassigned to, of all places.......you guessed it....... Fort Campbell, Kentucky. One weekend when I was really bored and had nothing better to do, I went back to that same little patch of woods. I learned that hunting was no longer allowed in that area due to safety concerns, so I just walked around for a bit. While strolling through the woods, I remembered the incident from 1984 and started searching for the tree I had been in. It is surprising how much a woodlot can change in only three years. It took more than an hour, but I actually found the exact same tree and, amazingly, my hand climber was still in it. Unfortunately, the tree had grown around the metal frame of it but as I remembered the incident, I couldn't help but laugh at myself. Well, just like my granddaddy always told me, anything that doesn't kill you, only makes you stronger.
