Here's my setup:
- EWO Ultimate One-Stick
- 2-step Amsteel aider: 15" spacing
- full-bury Amsteel rope
- Cam cleat
- 40' 8mm RescTech with a sewn eye on one end + EWO 22" sewn eye-to-eye hitch cord and Kong oval steel quicklink
- 40' orange dynaglide throwline for bow pull-up and rope retrieval + black diamond "mini" wiregate carabiner
- 8mm RescTech lineman's rope + 20" Cruzr sewn eye-to-eye hitch cord
- A second tether: OpLux with a sewn continuous prusik loop and a carabiner in a sewn loop
- Black Diamond figure-8 belay device for rappel
- A 120cm Mammut dyneema sling
- Climbing-rated carabiners for everything (Black Diamond and Wild Country)
- A loop of elastic shock cord with a plastic carabiner that I put in a prusik around my rappel/tether rope to keep it taut against the tree as I climb
I use those small Ottolini key-chain things and a length of 550 cord to tend my hitches, and that works well.
I use friction hitches for everything: lineman's rope uses a Michaocan hitch, and I run a Cosmo hitch on the tether/rappel line. I leave a prusik on my second-tether since I don't really adjust that under tension.
Getting up is pretty standard. I tied a loop into the end of the dynaglide line with a figure-8, feed it through the limbs of my bow and put a girth hitch in it around my stabilizer. I clip the little carabiner onto my saddle somewhere for the climb. I start out with the top of the stick at about head-height. I advance my tether as I climb, one-hand tending as I'm on the aider until I get onto the lower step, then moving the tether up along the trunk until I'm on the top step. The shockcord on rope just holds it firm against the tree so it doesn't slip down as I move. I climb back down to the lower step to move the stick, though, which I've found makes it easy to handle the stick to move and I still get to ~25' in 3 movements after the initial placement.
When I get to hunting-height, I put a HYS strap on the tree, attach my pack to it with an old Kong carabiner, and then open up the hero-clip I use as a bow-holder; I haul the bow up, take off the quiver and attach it to the HYS strap, and hang the bow on the hero clip. I take the carabiner from the dynaglide rope and attach that to the eye on the rappel rope. I disconnect my lineman's rope and stow it in a pouch. I disconnect the shockcord from the rope and put that in a pouch. I get my binos, range finder, and calls out of my pack and hang them. Once I hit legal light, I nock an arrow and attach my release (I use a thumb release to hunt) and I'm hunting.
To get back down, put everything away, reattach my quiver, lower my bow, then I re-attach my lineman's rope, pull it so I'm basically snug up against the tree. I put a little bit of slack in my tether and put the figure eight in into a bite of rope above the hitch: I use the sling (doubled over twice) with two carabiners to attach the figure 8 to my bridge. Now I toss down the slack of the rope and I lower myself down onto the lower step, disconnect and stow my lineman's rope and rappel down another foot or so. I grab my stick and I usually wrap it up right there: bunch up the aider as best I can and wrap the rope around it. I usually hold it across my chest while I rappel the rest of the way down. Once on the ground, disconnect from the rope, put the sling+biners and figure 8 away, and depending on the tree I either take the hitch and tender off the rope or I don't (if it's a telephone pole and the rope is coming straight down, I don't bother; if I know I'm going to have to pull the tag end of the rope through the quicklink, I do). I get the rope down, and figure-8 up the dynaglide line and put that away in a zippered pocket on a pouch, then I reattach the hitch and tender to my rappel/tether rope if necessary, put the shockcord prusik back on it, and figure-8 my rope and stow it in a pouch. I attach the stick to my pack, grab my bow, and head out. I had back to the truck completely ready to hunt again, and in basically the same configuration as I came from the truck.
I've found this setup can work for an all-day hang.