I have spent a season with Helium's, long sticks, and they are super easy to use, at 6'2" and a single step aider I got to 20' easily with the 3 steps, bought a 4th to get my wife there as she hated the aiders. They are heavy, cumbersome, bump into things on the walk in. They get locked together and required modification to work as advertised. But simple to install and very easy to learn. I keep them around for off season work in the trees because you can go up and down so easily.
I started with the cheap Muddy stagger steps, that was an horrible year. These make the hawks seem light. They clinked when transporting them so lots of sheath tape. Easy to put up. But, narrow, I cannot put 2 feet to a level unless it is just my toes. My little wife gets both feet on each rung. We have been using these for pre-hung stands and they work great, being cheap is a good thing some times. My wife uses them for stand work on a regular basis.
I have some of the Primal V-Steps, the WEI knock off types on Amazon, they don't like to cam on easily, harder to adjust. Never ran them for a season as they keep seeming to need stretched. But once stretched and they cam on they are great. Tried to use them to new trees has not worked. I now use them for pre-hung trees. We also left 3 packs of them out last season as pre-hung ROS on some larger trees, no deer from those trees but they told us where we got our set up wrong.
I have the WEI Stepps. Still a little heavy, was toying with getting a Kydex holster for them as the bag digs into my neck on long walks. Took a few times to get the knot right, them I saw the video about common mistakes and realized I was making a few small errors that seemed trivial but they were what was causing my "problems". So, Not super easy, small learning curve. I always struggled with the knaider/swaider moving side to side, so I quit using them and just carried extra steps to reach my height, so heavy. They were around for a season, still have a place in my set ups, I am think about carrying 3 or 4 and using them to get up to my pre-hung sticks and ladders.
I used Bullman Steps last year, easy to use, but back to 1 foot per step, hurt my plantar and had trouble using them. Not sure if they hurt my plantar or not, kind of leary to try them again, but will practice with them this summer again. They show some promise.
Also I am about to start learning 2TC as we learned last year that having an emergency rappelling system is a good idea, so looking at more ways to get up the tree also.
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