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SRT knee ascending

Sipsey

Sipsey

Well-Known Member
Joined
Dec 24, 2016
Messages
615
Location
W. Alabama
I’ve seen a good many posts on climbing with ascenders. It is an interesting technique and I have watched enough videos to actually understand the vocabulary & equipment. It may have been posted before but the fellow in the attached video made a neat setup for ascension with some bungy cord & rope, he callles it a “knee ascender.” There is something similar on the market but this looks to be fairly inexpensive. See what you think.
 
@g2outdoors just posted something yesterday about a knee ascender, video soon to follow.
He calls it a knaider.


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Thanks for sharing that. I would love to get into SRT. It's a compact, safe, lightweight and quick climbing method but I just don't know if I could ever do it quiet enough. Any of you SRT guys think you could setup near a bedding area in an unprepped tree without spooking a buck?
 
I think you’re right about near a bed. It would take flawless execution to pull off. Near a feeding or transition area might be ok. This year I’m switching to spikes & rappelling but I don’t ever see myself using a rope to get up.
 
I used SRT on a few hunts last year tight to bedding. I'm not very good at throwing weight and throw line where I want it - too many tries to get that right. Once I was set up though, I climbed pretty quietly and slowly. Like every other form of climbing, you make a noise, you stop. If deer hear a noise, they wait for another to follow shortly - that gets their attention. They let it go after a minute. Climbing the high side of the tree or a very straight tree was important for me so I could use my off leg to brace myself and "walk" up the tree.
 
You can buy the SAKA and the HAAS knee ascenders as they're commercially available. You can also build one its pretty simple!
 
Babshaft said:
Thanks for sharing that. I would love to get into SRT. It's a compact, safe, lightweight and quick climbing method but I just don't know if I could ever do it quiet enough. Any of you SRT guys think you could setup near a bedding area in an unprepped tree without spooking a buck?
Click to expand...
Depends on a lot of variables, There would have to be wind or rain and how close are we talking? Does the tree have leaves, What type of tree? How high up is a usable limb to anchor off of?
 
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TheTracker said:
Depends on a lot of variables, There would have to be wind or rain and how close are we talking? Does the tree have leaves, What type of tree? How high up is a usable limb to anchor off of?
Click to expand...

I see there's a lot to consider. That in itself makes it seem like it'd be a difficult system to master for the application I'm looking at.

I'm using spurs this year, but I'm also trying to prepare for the eventuality of someone putting the kibosh on it. I may buy one of the knee ascenders you mentioned or put a system together just to give it a try. I also like the idea of presetting trees with paracord that others have mentioned in other threads.

Thanks for the help, much appreciated!
 
kobudo said:
Man, that is flat out fast up a tree, but I think that I will leave that rapel down to the experts.

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Click to expand...
I've climbed with him before that's kevin Bingham, He lives 40 Miles from me. He is the inventor of the rope wrench and rope runner.

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Babshaft said:
I see there's a lot to consider. That in itself makes it seem like it'd be a difficult system to master for the application I'm looking at.

I'm using spurs this year, but I'm also trying to prepare for the eventuality of someone putting the kibosh on it. I may buy one of the knee ascenders you mentioned or put a system together just to give it a try. I also like the idea of presetting trees with paracord that others have mentioned in other threads.

Thanks for the help, much appreciated!
Click to expand...
Another problem I've noticed around where I hunt since its mostly flatground is bucks will bed in the thickest nastiest stuff there is so sometimes it makes it very hard to get close to them, If there's no leaves on the trees it also makes it easy for them to spot you climbing up into the tree if you go high enough or are close enough to their bedding! Sticks would be a better option in those situations, One problem with Srt climbing is you need to get your throw line over the limb/crotch to do a canopy or basal anchor, Higher the limb the less chances of making it in 1-2 throws so you're going to be making a lot more noise. What you could do is wait for a real rainy and windy day then go throw some preset lines into the tree!
 
TheTracker said:
Another problem I've noticed around where I hunt since its mostly flatground is bucks will bed in the thickest nastiest stuff there is so sometimes it makes it very hard to get close to them, If there's no leaves on the trees it also makes it easy for them to spot you climbing up into the tree if you go high enough or are close enough to their bedding! Sticks would be a better option in those situations, One problem with Srt climbing is you need to get your throw line over the limb/crotch to do a canopy or basal anchor, Higher the limb the less chances of making it in 1-2 throws so you're going to be making a lot more noise. What you could do is wait for a real rainy and windy day then go throw some preset lines into the tree!
Click to expand...

It’s similar for me here as well. A lot of my hunting is done in a large cedar swamp. I have to stay low because it’s too difficult to see through the canopy let alone shoot through it.

The rest of my hunting is done around small pockets of thick stuff, small swamps and beaver ponds that the bucks like to bed in. I’ve had success setting up near the edges in the hardwoods. That’s where I was hoping SRT could be an option in the eventuality that I’m not allowed to used spurs. If I was better at picking trees I could preset them with a bunch of paracord and it’d be a great way to use SRT.

Unfortunately, I’m more of a game time decision on picking the tree so it’d be a little more difficult and I’d need to get a lot of practice in to make SRT work on the flyz
 
PJC said:
@g2outdoors just posted something yesterday about a knee ascender, video soon to follow.
He calls it a knaider.


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Click to expand...
What G2 is using is an aider for sticks/stepps not for rope climbing

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I use a rope wrench with a HAAS (knee ascender) and foot ascender. I attached a pic of the first deer I shot with the setup. I walked into this little upland peninsula that stuck into a swamp area (lots of thick pepperbush). The upland was tore up so I tossed my throwline up over a branch (maybe 20ft as I try not to go crazy during an actual hunt) and climbed up. Probably 20 minutes after climbing up the rope had this buck stand up probably less than 50 yards in the swamp and come right to me a half hour or so before dark. The setup makes some noise but I feel like the sound of the throw bag landing after tossing the throwline or the sound of the rope wrench as you move up the rope are fairly quiet and benign noises. I've taped all my carabiners etc and that reduces noise. I bet nobody had been in this chunk of woods all season and Im sure having the wind right helps a lot too if you make a little noise. I don't know. But yah, multiple times I've climbed up the rope or been in the process of climbing the rope and had deer stand up and walk by without any worry. Perhaps if I made zero noise they would have stayed bedded down. I basically only hunt next to bedding areas and it seems to work fine. In some of these areas I leave the rope or a throwline up in the tree and that reduces the amount of noise/commotion I make. 11011991_10153796708423689_6768906548902024568_n.jpg
 
withakri said:
I use a rope wrench with a HAAS (knee ascender) and foot ascender. I attached a pic of the first deer I shot with the setup. I walked into this little upland peninsula that stuck into a swamp area (lots of thick pepperbush). The upland was tore up so I tossed my throwline up over a branch (maybe 20ft as I try not to go crazy during an actual hunt) and climbed up. Probably 20 minutes after climbing up the rope had this buck stand up probably less than 50 yards in the swamp and come right to me a half hour or so before dark. The setup makes some noise but I feel like the sound of the throw bag landing after tossing the throwline or the sound of the rope wrench as you move up the rope are fairly quiet and benign noises. I've taped all my carabiners etc and that reduces noise. I bet nobody had been in this chunk of woods all season and Im sure having the wind right helps a lot too if you make a little noise. I don't know. But yah, multiple times I've climbed up the rope or been in the process of climbing the rope and had deer stand up and walk by without any worry. Perhaps if I made zero noise they would have stayed bedded down. I basically only hunt next to bedding areas and it seems to work fine. In some of these areas I leave the rope or a throwline up in the tree and that reduces the amount of noise/commotion I make. View attachment 5338
Click to expand...

Wow, nice buck man! And that's precisely the first hand information I was curious about. I saw that photo in one of the SRT threads, but hearing that story really makes me want to give it a go. What foot ascender are you using? Any advice on gear, setups/climbing, tree selection or practice that you think would help a new guy getting setup?

Cheers
 
Sipsey said:
I’ve seen a good many posts on climbing with ascenders. It is an interesting technique and I have watched enough videos to actually understand the vocabulary & equipment. It may have been posted before but the fellow in the attached video made a neat setup for ascension with some bungy cord & rope, he callles it a “knee ascender.” There is something similar on the market but this looks to be fairly inexpensive. See what you think.
Click to expand...
Are you thinking of rope walking SRT systems? They work great but, in my opinion, are kind of overkill for what we do. We are usually going up 20-30 feet. RADs system is sufficient for the hieghts I hunt from and uses less equipment, weighs less, and is less complicated. I use the rope walking system (which uses a knee ascender like the HAAS, an ascender like a rope wrench and a, Pantine on the ankle) if I’m climbing high for tree work. That’s a lot of stuff for 20 feet but it is pretty cool. This guy makes it look easier than it is when I do it though.
 
I've thought about a RADS system as well, but thought it might be too noisy too.

@Adamcincy Would it be safe to use a rope man in conjunction with a hand ascender or do you think the grigri is necessary?
Thanks!
 
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