Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting New stand

Last year the local thieves came onto our property and stole our 2 person tree stand. Wife and I figured if they stole it once they would steal it again. Last week started building this. Floor sides are 2x6 with joists on 15 inch centers covered up with 1 inch decking boards. Sides are plywood. Floor is 5x5 and sides are 35 inches tall. Main posts are 4x4x12. X braces are 12 foot 2x4's and cross braces on the bottom are 2x6's. Had to cut down about a dozen small trees to get the tractor to the stand so we could use the FEL to stand it up. Once it was up slid a piece of 2x12 under each leg as a base and only had minor leveling to do. Using the 2x6's as cross bases allows me to use the tractor to lift each side individually so I can fine tune the leveling as it settles.
All wood is pressure treated and exterior screws were used everywhere except for ringed nails that hold the decking boards in place. Only thing remaining is to connect a strap to the holes on the metal brackets then screw in stainless 5 inch long eye bolts into the 4 trees closest and use ratcheting straps to help anchor in all 4 corners for safety reasons. Or do you think this is overkill?
Seems stable as a rock as both the wife and I were on top trying to shake it around and it didn't even wiggle. The stand in the tree had us limited to about 150 degrees of hunting in front of us and slightly to each side. We both missed great opportunities at big deer that were behind us as we could not twist around to get a shot off. Now we have 360 degrees as we sit in the nice swivel chair. Might add a roof but for now both of us like the openness. We have a ground blind close to this in case the weather really sucks. Estimate we have about $750 in materials including the aluminum ladder we bought for it. This was our first attempt at building a stand and think it came out pretty good.