One year one of my friends bought a high dollar two place leaning stand. He was hunting on public land, and was worried about theft. Bought the best American puck lock he could find, and used heavy anchor chain to secure the stand waaaay back in Walking through waist deep swamp. He thought it was safe, but after walking close to two miles back in the swamp on opening day of archery, he found that thieves had taken the ladder sections of the stand and left the top part, still securely chained to the tree. He was pizzed.
Next, He bought new ladder sections and moved the stand to an even more remote location, and this time used 50’ of even heavier anchor chain and the same high security puck lock. Next time he went back to hunt the stand, everything was gone, including the top portion, with the chain and lock still secured to the tree.
A few weeks after hunting season was over, one of our other friends saw a similar looking stand on Offer Up for a pretty cheap price and contacted him to see if he was interested in looking at it. They both went to the seller’s house and, after looking at the stand, realized it was HIS stand (with his name and number written on it). Apparently this little punk dirtbag took one of the above mentioned cordless die grinders and cut through the legs to get the stand free, then welded them back together and tried to resell it. They yoked the guy a little, and called the police, who showed up pretty quickly. After a bit of investigation, the PD found that this kid, along with a number of his buddies, had an entire three car garage completely full of stolen tree stands, all with cut/weld marks like my buddies stand. The kid and his friends were arrested and convicted, and spent a short time in jail for their efforts. After their arrests, there were no further stand thefts in any of the area management areas for quite a long time. Prior to their arrests, almost everyone you talked to had at least one stand stolen from those areas.
Funny thing is that prior to the theft and arrest, I had a rusty beater $79 Bass Pro leaner there for 5 years without it being touched. I mean it was locked with a cheap cable lock that a 6 year old with a hammer could defeat, and left on the tree year round until it was too risky to hunt it from rust. The reason it was left out there was that it almost killed us bringing it in all that way (it wasn’t light), and I fully expected to have it stolen, eventually, which it never was. Each year during archery, I would walk/wade out there and see my stand still standing, like an old friend. It even survived a prescribed burn, which basically soldered the lock shut and the cable coating to the stand legs. Shot quite a few deer from that stand.
So the moral of the story is...don’t expect that your high dollar stands will not be taken, no matter how good your lock is, and don’t hunt in South Florida.
Last edited by Capt_Craig; 10/21/20.
