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Spikes, Bolts, and Screw in Steps

Should Spikes, Bolts, and Screw in steps be made legal on public land?

  • Total voters
    62
gcr0003

gcr0003

Well-Known Member
SH Member
Joined
Nov 1, 2018
Messages
8,104
Should they be made legal on all public land? Permit or not? Fine for leaving them in the woods? If your state game or national forest land permits them, what are the rules?
Let’s go! @kyler1945 @Nutterbuster
 
Hard no on screw in steps, I've had too many grow in tight when I leave them for one season, bolts and spikes aren't as concerning for me
 
OK, I'll play. I said no for public and here is why. If lots of people spiked lots of trees it would be the same as people putting up permanent stands but probably worse. Imagine a good tree for a climber (or 1 stick or 2tc) but it is studded with rusty spikes that you might or might not want to climb on.

Don't get me wrong. I love tree bolts on private and I have permission to use spikes on a 240+ acre property that I will be going out and scouting and prepping once season is over.

It will be interesting to see other people's takes on this.
 
Bigterp said:
I voted no bc screw in steps can & are often left behind. I’m okay with gaffs & bolts (as long as they aren’t left in the tree), yes on 1&2, no on 3
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Yea I think even if you made cutting into the tree legal, people would still leave stuff in the tree and the woods even if that part of it wasn’t legal. Im now thinking it’d be better to keep it prohibited.

I have gaffs but they’re not comfortable at all. I m not convinced they do more damage than my ole man climber. That thing has some teeth on it.
 
Hard "no" on anything being left on public, for starters. Even if it's a semi-legal (here) strap-on stand or climber.

Most of the properties I hunt are state-managed WMAs on COE land. To my knowledge, there is no incentive or precedent for commercial logging. So no worries about financial loss or logger injury from bolts.

Most of the properties also are subject to hurricanes and saltwater intrusion and flooding. We lose a lot of trees, so not super-concerned about tree loss. I did this year finally see one tree dead that I had drilled in the past. So 1 out of literal hundreds doesn't concern me. It was a willow oak in a grove of willow oaks, so not a huge loss.

I think currently we have an ok system in place. There are a few properties I've hunted that are logged where I've been told no making holes. There are some where the biologist has implied that he didn't care what went on as long as stuff wasn't left in the woods.
 
The question is legal to use, not legal to leave. Though like I said I think you would still have people leaving them in trees. They’re prohibited and I still find screw in steps on public left.
 
Yes, truth be told, climbers do a fair amount of damage to some trees. I inadvertently killed a couple of big pines on the old lease from climbing them with my Summit too often.
 
Hard no on bolts/screw ins here. I don't know what yinz experience differently down in Dixieland but we have enough idiocy going on up here as it is.

Gaffs are such a niche of a niche thing I guess it might be ok, but why even bother I guess. I feel like people use them mostly to be contrarian, unless they work in them daily and it's a familiarity thing.
 
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I like the compromise of not leaving them in the tree. I use cranfords and they are to expensive to leave. I use the same set every time. These regulations all operate on the honor system anyway. As others have noted you will find lots of screw in steps left out already. I know of ladder stands that have been out for years. People ignore the regs on stands and screw ins and it doesn’t seem like the authorities have any interest in actually enforcing them.
 
They’re legal where I am (Georgia), but it is not legal to leave anything in the woods overnight.


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John 35 said:
I like the compromise of not leaving them in the tree. I use cranfords and they are to expensive to leave. I use the same set every time. These regulations all operate on the honor system anyway. As others have noted you will find lots of screw in steps left out already. I know of ladder stands that have been out for years. People ignore the regs on stands and screw ins and it doesn’t seem like the authorities have any interest in actually enforcing them.
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Yea they don't even enforce/follow up on illegal public land baiting so I don't think they're putting in any effort to stop people poking holes in trees.
 
gcr0003 said:
Yea they don't even enforce/follow up on illegal public land baiting so I don't think they're putting in any effort to stop people poking holes in trees.
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Lol I know I find those corn bags everywhere.
 
I was having a discussion with my dad this past weekend about game wardens. Are they permitted to walk through the woods and to your tree and check you while you're hunting during normal hunting hours? I've only ever been stopped and checked at the gates walking in/out.
 
gcr0003 said:
I was having a discussion with my dad this past weekend about game wardens. Are they permitted to walk through the woods and to your tree and check you while you're hunting during normal hunting hours? I've only ever been stopped and checked at the gates walking in/out.
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Yup.

I’ve met up with wardens at least 3 times in the field.
 
It sounds like most peoples beef with this is folks leaving stuff in the trees and less about harming the trees.
 
Nutterbuster said:
Most of the properties also are subject to hurricanes and saltwater intrusion and flooding. We lose a lot of trees, so not super-concerned about tree loss. I did this year finally see one tree dead that I had drilled in the past. So 1 out of literal hundreds doesn't concern me. It was a willow oak in a grove of willow oaks, so not a huge loss.
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The trouble with that is that you're looking at it on a human time scale, not on a tree's time scale. Arborists routinely look at problems in trees that were the result of damage from years, decades, even many decades prior. Recently I was looking at some old Southern Live Oaks in bad shape and judging by the pruning practices that were used, the guys who trashed those trees are probably dead and gone by now. In their minds they probably thought they did a great job but there's a group of majestic trees with massive decay ready to fall over as a result of their handy work.

I'm not saying one hole by itself is going to kill a tree. Trees don't always die from one thing, they often go into a "spiral of decline". They get some damage from one thing, something else in it's environment changes, one stress factor leads to another and they start to coalesce together and cause the tree to go into decline. Again, that process can be decades in the making, hunting the same tree for a few years isn't a long enough time frame to access the long term damage from one's practices.

Just food for thought
 
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