It seems like the marketing tsunami has largely left the site and migrated to facebook. I'm grateful to Admin for making that happen. Still, we all see shiny toys, and have to touch them and talk about them. And we still get a huge influx of new users to the site. The bait has been dropped in front of them. They know it seems too good to be true. So they stop in to the most trusted institution - SH.Com
I'm going to ramble on about a few things that I tend to go against the grain on, or am in the minority on. If you've got similar feelings, but are afraid to speak up, lest the fanboy tribalism carry you to the stake for virtual burning, I'll be the martyr. Now that I've offered my neck, join me! Let's give young hunters on a budget, or adult onset hunters looking to avoid wasting money a thread to help them cut out some nonsense.
I'll start this by saying that 90% of deer hunting success is a product of the space between your ears, and the space you park your rears. 5% is how much time you use those spaces. And 5% is the gear you use to support the effort. So above all else - go hunt, and worry about gear less, generally.
In no particular order...
I hate rubber boots. I hate putting them on. I hate taking them off. I hate slipping in the mud because of crappy treads. I hate the squeaks they make. I hate how bad my feet sweat in them. I hate that people think somehow that the scent pouring out the top of them and falling to the ground is any less than the scent left by regular hiking boots, tucked into your pants or not. I hunt about as wet an environment as you can hunt in the lower 48. I wear the same boots I wear elk hunting in Colorado as I do in the swamp. It works 75% of the time. For the other 25, it's either warm enough I don't care if my feet get wet - and I can wear the lightest breathable hikers I have, or if it's colder I wear chota hippies inside wading boots. I could see a place for a pair of rubbers with the yoder's chaps for this portion of hunting. But mostly, I cringe when I see dudes hiking hills and busting brush wearing rubber boots. Buy a pair of hiking boots. Your ankles and feet will thank you.
For the inexperienced HUNTER, with a compound bow, I hate 750 grain arrows, and multipin sights, and expandable broadheads, and shooting at deer past 30 yards. I know that's pretty random and disjointed. But really what I mean to say is with a little common sense, a little back of the envelope math, and leveraging millions of shots at deer, You can come to a pretty simple conclusion. Shoot a single pin sight, at deer from 0-30 yards, with a 500-600 grain arrow, with a cut on contact razor sharp broadhead. On a broadside shot, follow the back of the leg up, and shoot at the line separating the lower third of the deer from the middle third. Adjust according to your elevation and the deer's angle to you. That's it. Of course you can tweak any of these things till the cows come home. This the no nonsense, get it done way that allows you to focus on what actually matters in deer hunting - your brain, and the terrain.
I hate climbing sticks. I don't mind a single climbing stick. But packing and unpacking multiple sticks, accounting for them on the climb up, trying not to make noise with multiple pieces of metal all just doesn't make much sense to me. When you factor in every single facet of a climbing method - cost, amount of fiddling to get it ready to hunt, packing and unpacking it, climbing up and down with it, safety, etc - they're all pretty close in sum. The tradeoff of several pounds of sharp metal that must be dealt with before and after a hunt doesn't make any sense to me. I've tried it every different way.
I hate single panel saddles. Yup - I said it. Every single one that I've tried, save the latitude classic with the vertical reinforcements(I need to try it), all end up being the same. You're trying to manage both pressure squeezing your hips, and that pressure concentrating across two pieces of 2" webbing. You can adjust tether height, bridge length, angle of platform. And then you will experience diminishing returns as you try to overcome pressure. It just IS. You can only do so much. I will say that I tolerated this for a couple seasons, until I've gotten familiar with the Hybrid. The fact of the matter is no matter what little tweak or gadget or cut pattern or material that you add to your soft single panel saddle system, you're managing pounds per square inch on muscles and bones that like to experience less of them. If you're not at least trying a double panel saddle, you're missing the boat. My personal opinion is that even the double panel saddles are not good enough, but it seems to be a big enough of a jump that most people should be trying them. Disregard all the marketing about being sleek and light and cool and part of a club. Get your hands on a double panel saddle and thank me later.
That brings me to my next point. Saddle Hunting is not a "thing". I hate that it's become a trend. Smart people have figured out a way to exploit one of the strongest forces in human nature - fear of loss. It's been happening for years, and isn't unique to saddle hunting. Marketing smarty pants have figured out that if you tap into a person's fear, uncertainty, and doubt, they will subconsciously begin to alter their behavior. A person perfectly capable of having hunting success will slowly have their self confidence eroded, and in it's place, a belief that the next piece of gear will be the key to their success. Then their success doesn't change. But their wallet sure is lighter...This isn't an accident. A saddle is just a tool. It has certain advantages over other methods of hanging in a tree. But it comes with some tradeoffs too. In fact, all gear, like most things in life, should be considered in tradeoffs, not just upside. Sometimes it makes sense to hang from some thread facing a tree. Sometimes it doesn't. Use your noggin, and don't let the folks using your money for their second homes and hunting trips convince you otherwise. Speaking of sometimes it doesn't make sense to be in a tree...
I hate that people think you HAVE to climb a tree to hunt deer. Being in a tree serves three functions in hunting circumstances: Sometimes being elevated gives you a better vantage point in certain types of terrain/vegetation. Sometimes being elevated can change the way your scent is carried on the wind. And sometimes being elevated gets you out of a deer's line of sight to draw your bow to make a shot. If being in a tree does not improve your ability to spot deer in cover and/or shoot them, or if being in a tree doesn't change how your scent travels on the wind, or if being in a tree does not improve your odds of being able to draw your bow without being spotted, There's no point in climbing a tree. Think about the time, effort, anxiety, noise, and safety risk that comes along with climbing a tree. Find deer - they usually are where they are. Then figure out how to get in a position to kill them. That might involve getting in a tree. But oftentimes, it doesn't. Your saddle is a tool. Your climbing methods are tools. Use the best tool for the task at hand. I have killed as many deer from the ground at this point, that I have from a tree. Don't make me start pitblindhunter.com...Speaking of only climbing a tree when it makes sense...
Don't climb a tree unless you have really good odds of having a deer that you can shoot, walk under you. Good spots, and lots of time you'll never get back, get wasted sitting in a tree with nothing to show for it. Does the risk, time, effort, etc. make sense if you have a 1/100 chance of a deer coming through? Does having the deer know you're in an area, and that reducing the odds of them being in that area during daylight make sense? Or does it make more sense to use those 2-4 hours doing something to improve your odds of success? I personally feel really stupid when I sit in a tree for 4 hours and don't see a deer. Some folks say you can't kill a deer sitting on the couch. Well, you can't kill them if they're not underneath you, either. If you're the type that just needs peace and quiet away from the wife and kids and job, and sitting still for four hours with no activity is the goal, I'm for it. But if you want to kill deer, there are much more productive things you can do towards that end besides sitting in a tree for hours on end. Go find deer. Wear hiking boots not rubber boots and go burn the soles off of them. Do it in offseason, or during season. But find the deer. And don't get in a tree until you KNOW they'll be walking under it that day. You stack up enough hours and understanding of how deer behave and where they are behaving, you'll whittle down the number of hours needed to scout. Your saddle is a tool. Your climbing method is a tool. A tree is a tool. Use them when they make sense.
Shifting gears a little - I'm a proud badge wearing member of the safety/fun police. But I'm not the person that thinks you shouldn't take risks. In fact, it's the opposite. We've become a very fragile culture in a short period of time. It happens to any wealthy society. We are all afraid to fail, so we just want someone to give us the answer. I want people to fail. I want people to take risks, and fall flat on their face. But I'd prefer this stuff happen in figurative form, not literal. You sit in a tree all day because you're afraid to go get in a deer's kitchen and "blow them out." F That - they're deer. Their brain is tiny. Go get in their kitchen, and hide in the pantry. But when it comes to climbing a tree, and doing it "safely", I think this "just tell me what to do" attitude, combined with big egos, is a recipe for death and serious injury.
Climbing off the ground, to any height, is taking a huge risk. Our bodies are designed to be on the dirt - standing, sitting, kneeling, or laying in it. That design didn't happen overnight. It happened through those folks who understood it living to pass that understanding to their kids, and those that didn't, becoming said dirt. You cannot eliminate all the risk that comes along with getting off the ground. But having a good understanding of how accidents happen, and leveraging the tribal knowledge of the climbing community, will get you as close to zero as possible. The best place to get this knowledge is NOT facebook. It's not even here at SaddleHunter. There are three places to get this information - Books on climbing gear and technique written by competent members of the climbing community, the manufacturers of climbing gear, and certified climbing instructors.
This site, and hunters generally, are pioneering a novel use of tree climbing. But tree climbing itself is pretty evolved. You should keep in mind that people on the internet are just telling people what they think they should do as a signal that they want to be on the same team. They are not telling you what to do because they have any idea what you should actually be doing. They have no basis for giving advice or opinions besides their own anecdotal evidence - at best - and just a baseless opinion at worst. Don't listen to someone on the internet when it comes to climbing gear or techniques. In fact, DON'T ASK a person on the internet for advice or opinions. What you will get from them has a negative value to you. It does not help in ANY way. Seek advice from folks who are qualified and competent.
To anyone giving advice to random strangers on the internet on what equipment to use or how to use it - I hate when you do that. Am I guilty? Yes. This isn't finger pointing. This is acknowledging that this is a bad idea. Part of it is that your advice or opinion is unfounded, and generally useless to the people seeking advice. But the biggest reason is the way that information on the internet scales. Think about how hard it is to read the tone in this post? Can you tell if I'm just a jerk, or I'm trolling, or I really actually care. It's pretty hard to decipher. The reality is that it's a little of all three. Unfortunately, any person with enough money or mobility to get access to the internet can voice their opinion, or state their own facts. And, anyone with enough money or mobility to get access to the internet can read that information, and make decisions based off of what appears to be valid opinions, or useful facts.
This comes down to math. You can take the risk of a failure or injury or death from a number near zero, to something very far away from zero, with just a couple of posts on the internet. Promoting an unsafe climbing method, or the wrong gear on the internet will increase the denominator - that is the number of people potentially using the bad idea or method. 1,000,000 to 1 is a .0001% chance of failure. But if 10,000 people watch your video or view your post, and just 100 people follow suit, it increases to a .01% chance. Let's say those folks use the method or equipment 10 times each in a season - That means someone is going to experience a failure that could end their life or alter it significantly by way of serious injury. The ONLY difference is that the bad idea was shared on the internet.
I don't think people should not climb trees - I just think folks have a fundamental misunderstanding of the risks. And if they were better informed, and thought about it the right way, they can put themselves in a much better position safety wise. Another big help is not climbing a tree for no reason!
I'm fully aware I'm a hypocrite, and quickly turning into an old bat way too young. This is meant to be a little provocative, and get people fired up - in a good way. So please, share your dislikes, or different ways of doing things. Hopefully it will be constructive, and maybe save someone some time or money. And who knows, you might just learn me a thing or two - for that I'd be grateful!
I'm going to ramble on about a few things that I tend to go against the grain on, or am in the minority on. If you've got similar feelings, but are afraid to speak up, lest the fanboy tribalism carry you to the stake for virtual burning, I'll be the martyr. Now that I've offered my neck, join me! Let's give young hunters on a budget, or adult onset hunters looking to avoid wasting money a thread to help them cut out some nonsense.
I'll start this by saying that 90% of deer hunting success is a product of the space between your ears, and the space you park your rears. 5% is how much time you use those spaces. And 5% is the gear you use to support the effort. So above all else - go hunt, and worry about gear less, generally.
In no particular order...
I hate rubber boots. I hate putting them on. I hate taking them off. I hate slipping in the mud because of crappy treads. I hate the squeaks they make. I hate how bad my feet sweat in them. I hate that people think somehow that the scent pouring out the top of them and falling to the ground is any less than the scent left by regular hiking boots, tucked into your pants or not. I hunt about as wet an environment as you can hunt in the lower 48. I wear the same boots I wear elk hunting in Colorado as I do in the swamp. It works 75% of the time. For the other 25, it's either warm enough I don't care if my feet get wet - and I can wear the lightest breathable hikers I have, or if it's colder I wear chota hippies inside wading boots. I could see a place for a pair of rubbers with the yoder's chaps for this portion of hunting. But mostly, I cringe when I see dudes hiking hills and busting brush wearing rubber boots. Buy a pair of hiking boots. Your ankles and feet will thank you.
For the inexperienced HUNTER, with a compound bow, I hate 750 grain arrows, and multipin sights, and expandable broadheads, and shooting at deer past 30 yards. I know that's pretty random and disjointed. But really what I mean to say is with a little common sense, a little back of the envelope math, and leveraging millions of shots at deer, You can come to a pretty simple conclusion. Shoot a single pin sight, at deer from 0-30 yards, with a 500-600 grain arrow, with a cut on contact razor sharp broadhead. On a broadside shot, follow the back of the leg up, and shoot at the line separating the lower third of the deer from the middle third. Adjust according to your elevation and the deer's angle to you. That's it. Of course you can tweak any of these things till the cows come home. This the no nonsense, get it done way that allows you to focus on what actually matters in deer hunting - your brain, and the terrain.
I hate climbing sticks. I don't mind a single climbing stick. But packing and unpacking multiple sticks, accounting for them on the climb up, trying not to make noise with multiple pieces of metal all just doesn't make much sense to me. When you factor in every single facet of a climbing method - cost, amount of fiddling to get it ready to hunt, packing and unpacking it, climbing up and down with it, safety, etc - they're all pretty close in sum. The tradeoff of several pounds of sharp metal that must be dealt with before and after a hunt doesn't make any sense to me. I've tried it every different way.
I hate single panel saddles. Yup - I said it. Every single one that I've tried, save the latitude classic with the vertical reinforcements(I need to try it), all end up being the same. You're trying to manage both pressure squeezing your hips, and that pressure concentrating across two pieces of 2" webbing. You can adjust tether height, bridge length, angle of platform. And then you will experience diminishing returns as you try to overcome pressure. It just IS. You can only do so much. I will say that I tolerated this for a couple seasons, until I've gotten familiar with the Hybrid. The fact of the matter is no matter what little tweak or gadget or cut pattern or material that you add to your soft single panel saddle system, you're managing pounds per square inch on muscles and bones that like to experience less of them. If you're not at least trying a double panel saddle, you're missing the boat. My personal opinion is that even the double panel saddles are not good enough, but it seems to be a big enough of a jump that most people should be trying them. Disregard all the marketing about being sleek and light and cool and part of a club. Get your hands on a double panel saddle and thank me later.
That brings me to my next point. Saddle Hunting is not a "thing". I hate that it's become a trend. Smart people have figured out a way to exploit one of the strongest forces in human nature - fear of loss. It's been happening for years, and isn't unique to saddle hunting. Marketing smarty pants have figured out that if you tap into a person's fear, uncertainty, and doubt, they will subconsciously begin to alter their behavior. A person perfectly capable of having hunting success will slowly have their self confidence eroded, and in it's place, a belief that the next piece of gear will be the key to their success. Then their success doesn't change. But their wallet sure is lighter...This isn't an accident. A saddle is just a tool. It has certain advantages over other methods of hanging in a tree. But it comes with some tradeoffs too. In fact, all gear, like most things in life, should be considered in tradeoffs, not just upside. Sometimes it makes sense to hang from some thread facing a tree. Sometimes it doesn't. Use your noggin, and don't let the folks using your money for their second homes and hunting trips convince you otherwise. Speaking of sometimes it doesn't make sense to be in a tree...
I hate that people think you HAVE to climb a tree to hunt deer. Being in a tree serves three functions in hunting circumstances: Sometimes being elevated gives you a better vantage point in certain types of terrain/vegetation. Sometimes being elevated can change the way your scent is carried on the wind. And sometimes being elevated gets you out of a deer's line of sight to draw your bow to make a shot. If being in a tree does not improve your ability to spot deer in cover and/or shoot them, or if being in a tree doesn't change how your scent travels on the wind, or if being in a tree does not improve your odds of being able to draw your bow without being spotted, There's no point in climbing a tree. Think about the time, effort, anxiety, noise, and safety risk that comes along with climbing a tree. Find deer - they usually are where they are. Then figure out how to get in a position to kill them. That might involve getting in a tree. But oftentimes, it doesn't. Your saddle is a tool. Your climbing methods are tools. Use the best tool for the task at hand. I have killed as many deer from the ground at this point, that I have from a tree. Don't make me start pitblindhunter.com...Speaking of only climbing a tree when it makes sense...
Don't climb a tree unless you have really good odds of having a deer that you can shoot, walk under you. Good spots, and lots of time you'll never get back, get wasted sitting in a tree with nothing to show for it. Does the risk, time, effort, etc. make sense if you have a 1/100 chance of a deer coming through? Does having the deer know you're in an area, and that reducing the odds of them being in that area during daylight make sense? Or does it make more sense to use those 2-4 hours doing something to improve your odds of success? I personally feel really stupid when I sit in a tree for 4 hours and don't see a deer. Some folks say you can't kill a deer sitting on the couch. Well, you can't kill them if they're not underneath you, either. If you're the type that just needs peace and quiet away from the wife and kids and job, and sitting still for four hours with no activity is the goal, I'm for it. But if you want to kill deer, there are much more productive things you can do towards that end besides sitting in a tree for hours on end. Go find deer. Wear hiking boots not rubber boots and go burn the soles off of them. Do it in offseason, or during season. But find the deer. And don't get in a tree until you KNOW they'll be walking under it that day. You stack up enough hours and understanding of how deer behave and where they are behaving, you'll whittle down the number of hours needed to scout. Your saddle is a tool. Your climbing method is a tool. A tree is a tool. Use them when they make sense.
Shifting gears a little - I'm a proud badge wearing member of the safety/fun police. But I'm not the person that thinks you shouldn't take risks. In fact, it's the opposite. We've become a very fragile culture in a short period of time. It happens to any wealthy society. We are all afraid to fail, so we just want someone to give us the answer. I want people to fail. I want people to take risks, and fall flat on their face. But I'd prefer this stuff happen in figurative form, not literal. You sit in a tree all day because you're afraid to go get in a deer's kitchen and "blow them out." F That - they're deer. Their brain is tiny. Go get in their kitchen, and hide in the pantry. But when it comes to climbing a tree, and doing it "safely", I think this "just tell me what to do" attitude, combined with big egos, is a recipe for death and serious injury.
Climbing off the ground, to any height, is taking a huge risk. Our bodies are designed to be on the dirt - standing, sitting, kneeling, or laying in it. That design didn't happen overnight. It happened through those folks who understood it living to pass that understanding to their kids, and those that didn't, becoming said dirt. You cannot eliminate all the risk that comes along with getting off the ground. But having a good understanding of how accidents happen, and leveraging the tribal knowledge of the climbing community, will get you as close to zero as possible. The best place to get this knowledge is NOT facebook. It's not even here at SaddleHunter. There are three places to get this information - Books on climbing gear and technique written by competent members of the climbing community, the manufacturers of climbing gear, and certified climbing instructors.
This site, and hunters generally, are pioneering a novel use of tree climbing. But tree climbing itself is pretty evolved. You should keep in mind that people on the internet are just telling people what they think they should do as a signal that they want to be on the same team. They are not telling you what to do because they have any idea what you should actually be doing. They have no basis for giving advice or opinions besides their own anecdotal evidence - at best - and just a baseless opinion at worst. Don't listen to someone on the internet when it comes to climbing gear or techniques. In fact, DON'T ASK a person on the internet for advice or opinions. What you will get from them has a negative value to you. It does not help in ANY way. Seek advice from folks who are qualified and competent.
To anyone giving advice to random strangers on the internet on what equipment to use or how to use it - I hate when you do that. Am I guilty? Yes. This isn't finger pointing. This is acknowledging that this is a bad idea. Part of it is that your advice or opinion is unfounded, and generally useless to the people seeking advice. But the biggest reason is the way that information on the internet scales. Think about how hard it is to read the tone in this post? Can you tell if I'm just a jerk, or I'm trolling, or I really actually care. It's pretty hard to decipher. The reality is that it's a little of all three. Unfortunately, any person with enough money or mobility to get access to the internet can voice their opinion, or state their own facts. And, anyone with enough money or mobility to get access to the internet can read that information, and make decisions based off of what appears to be valid opinions, or useful facts.
This comes down to math. You can take the risk of a failure or injury or death from a number near zero, to something very far away from zero, with just a couple of posts on the internet. Promoting an unsafe climbing method, or the wrong gear on the internet will increase the denominator - that is the number of people potentially using the bad idea or method. 1,000,000 to 1 is a .0001% chance of failure. But if 10,000 people watch your video or view your post, and just 100 people follow suit, it increases to a .01% chance. Let's say those folks use the method or equipment 10 times each in a season - That means someone is going to experience a failure that could end their life or alter it significantly by way of serious injury. The ONLY difference is that the bad idea was shared on the internet.
I don't think people should not climb trees - I just think folks have a fundamental misunderstanding of the risks. And if they were better informed, and thought about it the right way, they can put themselves in a much better position safety wise. Another big help is not climbing a tree for no reason!
I'm fully aware I'm a hypocrite, and quickly turning into an old bat way too young. This is meant to be a little provocative, and get people fired up - in a good way. So please, share your dislikes, or different ways of doing things. Hopefully it will be constructive, and maybe save someone some time or money. And who knows, you might just learn me a thing or two - for that I'd be grateful!
