All climbing methods are closer together than farther apart when you consider weight, packability, cost, and total time spent focusing on it(researching for hours on forums and gear websites to purchase, practice, packing it up, carrying it, unpacking it, putting it on or setting it up, climbing up, preparing to climb down, climbing down, packing it to leave, carrying it out, storing it).
No matter what anyone tells you, when you add all of these factors together, they’re all very close to each other. The only way to tease them apart are personal limitations (fitness, weight, risk aversion, available time to hunt, private/public, etc.) by the time you build a matrix of your personal factors amd make a judgement on what’s best for you, you could’ve invented a totally new climbing method and perfected it. Or bought any one of the fifty available.
Example: climbing sticks are super fast to climb with. Bolts are super slow to climb with.
Sticks: Add up how much time you spent deciding on them, doing whatever modifications you thought were necessary, packing them, buying 7 different packs to make them not annoying to pack, unpacking them at a tree, getting you and them up the tree, climbing and taking them down, packing them up to leave, packing them out, not destroying everything in your vehicle and tote with them.
Do this for five seasons, 30 times each season.
Bolts: Buy only drill available. Buy grade 8 bolts. Spend 30 minutes arguing and debating whether to get 6 or 6.5” bolts, put them in your pocket, climb tree, climb down and put them back in your pocket, throw them in cubby in back door of truck or bottom of pack.
Yes, you can climb up a tree with sticks in about half the time it takes to drill your way up with bolts. Maybe even 1/3. You’ll make almost ALL that time up on the climb down. You’ll make up the rest not having to pack and unpack and repack it. This is not considering the countless time spent figuring out the BEST sticks.
Once you’ve done this simple math, someone will chime in that you can’t use bolts on public land.
Revert to first two paragraphs.
Weeeeeeeeee