i wouldnt know .thought about trying all these systems.but they just arnt rellivent to where i live i have endless branches for climbing.figured someone here might have hashed it out by now
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Who Wants Nothing To Do With One Sticking?
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Right off the Factory Website:
Summit Open Shot = 300lbs
Lone Wolf Hand Climber top = 300lbs
Supposedly, to get the same rating, the bottom of the stand has to perform at a higher level than the top. It's something like the seat needs a 1.5X safety factor while the bottom needs 3X.....almost like they only expected people to sit on them.
You have to get out of bed in the morning. I’m out of the bed at 0330 and on the road by 0400. I’m at the woods early enough so I can walk in sloooowwwly. A slow steady pace. At 30 degrees, I walk in with a thin long sleeve base layer, goose down pants and bibs, Put my goose down upper and parka on at the base of the tree, climb the tree sloooowwwly, take my time, no rush, still 45 minutes before it starts cracking daylight, never break a sweat; then sit in the tree for 30 min enjoy the darkness. Also keeps the walk in quiet, you are going slow so you can watch where you are stepping, kind of like squirrel hunting.
When you climb the tree you are putting 100% of your weight, plus the weight of the bottom of the stand, on the top. So if the bottom is rated at 300lbs, then the top would also have to hold 300lbs + the weight of the bottom of the stand as well. I don’t weigh anywhere near 300lbs so I’m pretty confident that I would be safe standing on the top.
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Have you seen the various threads where people have broken the top of a Lone Wolf by using it as a platform?
Also, it might not make sense, but the tops and bottoms of stands are held to different standards. I've read it here several times. And someone always chimes in with your response. To which I'll say "just because it is logical, doesn't mean it is TMA policy".
How many unmodded tops have you seen or heard of that broke? Less than 5? Less than 10 or more than 10? I have read about 1 or maybe two, and I know one of those had the “bolt mod”. Obviously, any top that has “the bolt mod” or has been drilled or anything else that changes the configuration of the top has to be thrown out of the analysis. However, given that a very small percentage of tops sold are being used as a climber, it would only take a few failures to result in a statistically significant failure rate. Of course you would also need to understand the failure rate of the tops when being used as designed, during normal stand operation for a comparison with the rate of failure for the top being used as climber. Unfortunately, we can even begin to guess how many tops are being used this way. It would also be interesting to know the weight of the users during the failure incidents.
I am willing to look at the issue from different perspectives and question my own deductions. The first would be the weight distribution of the person when standing on vs sitting on vs climbing with the top. When standing on the top, you are able to concentrate all of your weight in the very center of the casting. When sitting, your weight would be more equally distributed over the entire casting. When climbing, your weight would be concentrated on the edges of the casting or on the arms themselves. It is possible that concentrating your weight in the center of the casting results in metal fatigue over time, causing the casting to fail, although I can’t imagine that the manufacturer would not have tested for someone standing on the platform or putting their arms in the center of the casting when climbing, which would again concentrate their weight in the center of the casting and potentially lead to fatigue....if that were a thing.
I find your suggestion of a 1.5X safety factor for the top to be reasonable. So that would represent failure at 450lbs for the top. I only weigh 170lbs or 37% of 1.5X rated failure weight. If I was pushing 250lbs I probably would be more cautious about the method. Thoughts?
I’ve read a couple reports about tops breaking when used in tree stand mode.
Here is one such report:
Tree stand malfunctions - Louisiana Sportsman
By always wearing a safety harness in elevated stands, checking equipment and exercising many accidents can be prevented.
www.louisianasportsman.com
I use the bottom. Though, I worry about belt integrity too.
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That one failed in the normal operating mode, which is what I was talking about above; in order to do a statistical comparison of the failures, you would need to know how many tops fail using them as designed. If we had that data, we might find that there are no more failures when used as a climber than when used as designed, but we don’t have that data, so we can’t draw any conclusions....one way, or the other.I’ve read a couple reports about tops breaking when used in tree stand mode.
Here is one such report:
Tree stand malfunctions - Louisiana Sportsman
By always wearing a safety harness in elevated stands, checking equipment and exercising many accidents can be prevented.
I use the bottom. Though, I worry about belt integrity too.
Right. We’ll never know of all the failures. However, I easily draw conclusions. LWHC tops fail, LW climber belts fail.
I’ll leave statics to someone else. I have stood on the top and bottom of LW climbers. I’ve measured the thicknesses. I’ve looked at the designs. I won’t use a LWHC top as a platform.
On a positive note, the LWHC method is a tether climbing technique so there is a safety element to it.
That is part of my risk calculus as well. Tether climbing, when coupled with a rappelling setup, significantly reduces the risk if the platform were to fail.
8 years ago I had the arm break off the seat portion of my LWHC while i was using it as it was intended, as a climber. I was about 18-20 foot up when the arm sheared off as i leaned on it to pull the base portion up and BAM, i was falling backwards in the blink of an eye. Luckily had a harness on.
As such, i think guys that use the seat portion alone to climb are out of their minds as those are MOST DEFINITELY not designed to be used to climb a tree or stand on but to each their own. I have climbed with a LWHC for saddle hunting but i used the bottom portion which is designed to be stood on.
Interesting it says right on the pic you posted "Not for Saddle hunting". Wonder why they put that there?
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Id buy one that was half the weight of my LWHC base in a heartbeat. I just lean into my saddle and push off against the tree when im pulling it up, works great but its heavier than it needs to be. Surprised noone designed one yet with all the new stuff being built and crazy one sticks with platforms on top of them and such.
Hmmmm, starting to sound like it fails just as much using it as designed as it does when using it as climber. So, maybe it’s not breaking because people are using it as a climber. Maybe it’s breaking because it a piece of crap no matter how you use it. Why say it’s Not for Saddle Hunting? If you were in the business of selling tree stands would you rather sell a whole stand or half a stand? Too many people just buying the tops. I would bet that you won’t ever be able to buy just the top again.
It’s a really minuscule market when you think about it, and I’m sure it would be rather expensive to design, test and get it certified...if you could even get it approved. Tree stand manufacturers run the “safety aspect” of tree stands. Can’t imagine they would be too thrilled at approving half a stand.
This is the same thing I tell everyone getting into saddle hunting or the more acrobatic climbing methods. I used to fall victim to trying new things on a hunt and always ended up frustrated. But if you practice a lot you can be really quiet and efficient. That goes for every climbing method. The appeal of one sticking isn’t that it’s better or easier. It’s that you only have to carry one stick which has several benefits besides the weight factor. Multiple sticks will at some point interact and make noise. You also have to find a way to quietly take the sticks up the tree as you go. And if you do 4 one stick moves to get to 20 feet you generally would have had to hang 4 separate sticks to get to that same height which means you’re doing the noisy part of hanging a stick 4 times in either climbing method. The biggest benefit for me is the small footprint of carrying one stick. It’s about the same as 5 WE stepps with a K&S or a small lightweight set of spurs, or SRT gear. The acrobatic climbing methods are just easier to stuff into or onto a pack and carry through the woods because they are lighter and smaller profile than a set of sticks.
LW was the Gold standard for Treestands for decades. I might have to mention that when my stand broke it had already endured about 20 years of hard use at my hands. For ten years of that time i worked a 7/70 schedule and had every other week off and no kids so i hunted every single day. I cant imagine how many trees that stand was up and down in that time. So calling it a piece of crap is quite the stretch.
Now that being said, i contacted LW when it broke. They replaced the entire seat portion no questions asked on a 20 year old stand. Try getting any of these new saddle companies to do that, GOOD LUCK! They dont even replace/recall stuff thats brand new that they know to be faulty!
LW attributed the failure to climbing too small of trees which I am absolutely guilty of. They said that when you climb too small of a tree it causes too much stress on those arms as it causes them to be pulled inward at too extreme an angle. So essentially, i was using the stand out of their specs which caused a failure and they STILL replaced it.
The point, using the seat as a platform is also out of spec and is why they are failing. Either way, its only my opinion that they are dangerous obviously quite a few people disagree with me. As a saddle hunter in general we are taking on a degree of risk every time we go up the tree obviously no matter what we use. But i try to be as safe and mindful of what im doing at elevation as I can be so my 7 yo gets to keep his dad.
Some guys are ok with standing on a platform that WILL fail because they dont mind hanging from a tether 20 feet up and thats ok too, to each their own. I just hope everything else works as expected for them so they are able to self rescue instead of having the ground stop their free fall out in the middle of nowhere. Ive seen some pretty tragic treestand stuff, talking guys that will never move their arms and legs again or TBIs that turned their brains to mush type stuff, in my line of work.