Passing by old treestands

[waknstak IL]

When I first started bowhunting in the late 80s it was pretty common to see old stands nailed up on public land. They have been illegal here so long now that they have pretty much all rotted away.

[Tom Leemans]

Lots of old tree house type stands nailed into huge old oak trees. Must've been the place to be when the acorns dropped!

[reddogge]

The problem with the locations is most were built as rifle stands and were designed to cover large areas that deer used during the rifle season. I find you need to really pinpoint a trail within those areas to get a good bowshot at a deer.

[Uncle Bun Bun]

I've passed by them with them with the same wonderings as to their history. I also look for trails in the area.
I've seen some to that made me scratch my head wondering what the heck the hunter was thinking. One stand on a piece of property that I used to hunt had an old disk from a harrow for the seat. If there was any more to the stand, that is all that was left. The harrow had grown into the large pine.
A friend hunted a property that had an old stand that was a metal folding chair simply bungee strapped to the tree. It took some kind of brave stupidity for somebody to hunt from that contraption.

[Pon]

Any Pictures?

[Ulysseys]

I see series of old wooden stands on public land in NJ - clubs are pretty common around here so I often wonder about the group of guys that must of hunted the area years ago

[2Blade]

Heres one of the many on the Mountain we hunt. This one isnt as old and was built by my Uncles oh about 20 years ago. They have killed alot of deer from it. Its HIGH about if you cant tell from the pic. This stand is on a Pipe Line and the deer just thrive there. Infact I killed my best buck this year sitting across from this old stand  

[Red Beastmaster]

Up in my little woodlot there was a death trap hanging on a tree for as long as I can remember. It was just an old kitchen chair on a few boards. No railing, no platform, no steps, just a chair about 20' up. I can't imagine anyone being stupid enough to use it. But, then again, people do some pretty dumb things just to shoot a deer.

I was still hunting the area last week and noticed it had fallen. It's been hanging by a thread for the past few years and I guess the last nail finally pulled out. I'll have to go back and check out the chair, it would be great to use it in a natural blind or something.

[Bowwild]

Neat thread.

In my teens (early 70's) when scouting a new place I have to admit, old stands were very attractive to me -- I figured everyone knew more about where to hunt than I did.  I killed the first live deer I ever saw with a Pearson Cougar from such a stand in 1970.

These days I see very few and most are so decayed they are only old steps and maybe a brace or two in a tree. I imagine some of these are at least 15-20 years old.  Of course I don't hunt them but I do look around to see why they were put there. I usually find a much better place to put a stand than these locations -- hopefully my scouting has gotten better?

On December 30th while recovering a Doe I passed a homemade stand I had never seen but knew existed. It is about 120 yards from one of my stands. An elderly rifle-hunter killed a 152 in 2010 from this stand. I measured the buck. The stand is less than 10' feet high. It is a homemade wooden ladder with a small platform on top with a 2"x2" brace lashed between the two boles of this tree for support and a rifle rest. The wood in this stand, except for the brace, is very old and weak-looking.

[DeCurry]

There are a few on the property I hunted this year.  The land owner cleared a large field and they discovered a fairly elaborate one in a grove of trees, even he didn't know it was there.  My nephews found two more in more remote areas, neither useable.

One of these proved to be very well placed; it literally sits in the Y of a heavily used set of trails.  I frequently go back to that area to still hunt.  The odd thing, though, is that it is barely 6 feet off the ground; I don't know if the landscape has changed a great deal since it was put up or what, but it's very low -- and it sits so close to one of the trails you could literally leap forward and just grab a deer walking past... if you were so inclined, heh.

[gregg dudley]

Neat thread!  I always take a look and try to figure out why they are where they are.  Sometimes I have put up a stand and then realized that there is an old relic nearby.  That always makes me smile.

But sometimes I am left scratching my head like Bowhunter GA...

[Killdeer]

This is where I killed my first deer.
Killdeer

[Duncan]

Then, just as now, some hunters just knew what they were doing. They took time to scout the best spots they could find and then build a stand after determining that a place was worth the effort. Bag limits were often one deer per season and the seasons were often only a week or two long. I knew a man whose wife told me after he passed that in 25 years he had collected 25 deer, all from the same tree. I hunted the same property years later as member of a deer camp and those old stands were always a good indicator of a pattern.

[Caleb Andes]

That is so crazy that you posted those reflections. My father in law just bought a new farm this year and I did not have time to put up many stands. Luckily the people that hunted there before never felt the need to take their stands with them, so I hunted their stands all year long. I never got a shot this year but a fellow trad ganger and my father both harvested deer out of the same old 10' high plywood boarded ladder stand.

[jrnorton4]

Great thread, great memories.
There is one such stand on our place that was put up by my cousin years ago.  He died at 18 yrs old in a car accident, and that was in 1988. Our neighbors nicknamed the stand the "bloody bucket" because he took so many deer from it. I got my first deer from it about 18 years ago, and walked past it last weekend and found 6 active scrapes within shotgun range (our rut is just starting to wind down). Might just have to string up the Double BB and go sit Saturday...

[Zbone]

Killdeer - Cool pic...

I have some photos, but don't know how to post them here (I don't do photobucket).

[rraming]

this was the strangest thing I have ever seen, this tree is like 6 feet thick,supported by a 2x4, it is at least 25 feet off the ground. The only was you could get this up was using a 32 foot ladder, I don't know how you could climb this tree. Only thing I can come up with is it was a joke played on someone

[Dimondback]

I found one in a large tri-truncked oak on a small plot I hunt in VA. I set my climber up near it and had buck chase a doe right under me through a natural choke point between some thick stuff and a creek...couldn't get either one to stop long enough to get a shot....I guess that stand was there for a reason.

[toddster]

well, back in november, I set a young guy up, who I got into hunting on a site, where I seen deer of course, but there was an old busted down stand 40 yards away,  he harvested his first deer.  Fast forward to tonight,  I got home from hunting and he had a car problem and needed a lift to his grandpas.  So, I took him since he lived closed, I new his granddad in passing.  We got to talking, about longbows and how he hunted years ago a little with them.  Then he told me he finally took his first deer from a new technique of tree standing with the bow.  his buddy who helped him build it took a picture of the deer on his uncles property.  We talked and he described the area,and I finally asked if he had the picture.  He thought a bit and said yes, after 15 minutes he came back and showed me.  Yes, the stand was there in the background of him smiling over a nice small doe.  I shook my head and he asked what was wrong.  I called his grandson in and told them both.  Talk about history and legacy only the native americans really fealt.  The grandson shot his first deer with a recurve, the same place as his granddad had took his first deer with a longbow.  yes, I had a tear in my eye.

[Eric Sprick]

I run across them every once and awhile and always wonder the same thing.  Always give those areas a good look.

Eric