I took a lot of guff last year for wearing a safety harness in a ladder stand with a shooting rail. The usual comment was you really more at risk getting up and down the ladder, don't need one once you are in it if it is properly attached to a big enough tree. Your thoughts? Buckfever 1

On my fixed position stands I use fall guy retractors. They would work great for a ladder stand. They will keep you safe up/down and while in the stand.

As for taking guff for wanting to be safe.. Thats about the only downside to wearing a harness.

I wouldnt care how much they were laughing at me.....I'd wear a pink one if I had to.

They wouldnt be laughing if they fell out of one now would they?

I don't care for them, but I wear one.

Your friends are at least partially right; you have the most danger getting in and out of the stand. I think the figure is something like 73% of the accidents come from that.

Ladder stands have a lot going for them as far as safety, but they're hardly a complete answer on their own. The biggest danger I see once you're in the stand is forgetting where you are and stepping off. I've come close a couple of times, especially when I'm wearing the boot blankets-- it's hard to feel where you are. There's falling asleep-- I used to be a big one for that when I had the climber. I doubt anyone has had outright stand failure with these tubular metal ladders, but I don't want to be the first.

Forget the rail. It will do nothing if you actually do fall. If you go, you're taking the rail with you.

Bottom line: wear a harness when you're in and keep three points of contact at all time on the ladder going in and out. If you don't have someone who knows where to look for you, go the extra distance and rig a safety line with a prussic knot for catching your fall if you come off the ladder.

wouldn't step into any tree stand without one.

-ken

My thoughts, falling is so much different than jumping 18' or 20'. The older a guy is the most likely it is going to hurt.

Let them laugh all they want. Wear the harness.

A guy on our lease was severly injured when he was pitched out of a two person ladder stand when his mate was climbing out of it..

There is a fairly fool proof design of ladder stand, but for some reason its rarely used, instead most designs require some climbing or limbo dancing to get in or out of the seat part...

Edited to add a pic showing the design I am refering to:


With this design, a person climbs up the "inside" of the ladder until he reaches the level of the seat and then simply sits back...No climbing, turning, or limboing under the shooting rail to get in or out of the seat...

I always wear one. I have a good friend who fell last year and is now paralyzed from the waist down. He was wearing Muck boots and slipped on a wet screw-in type step.

Below is a long article, but worth reading if you do wear a harness. Might save your life.

WHAT YOU MUST KNOW TO SURVIVE IN A TREESTAND
By Dr. Norman Wood, 2009


Most hunters are not aware of the term Suspension Trauma, let alone the fact that you can die quickly in a safety harness from this killer. Most hunters feel that as long as they are wearing a full body safety harness and fall out of their treestand they will be fine, and most of the time you are. But if you fall and are unable to recover to a standing position, you can die in as little as 5 to 30 minutes. NASA studies have shown their personnel becoming unconscious in as little as 4 minutes while suspended in a harness and death will shortly follow unconsciousness. You must always use your full body harness correctly or it could cost you dearly.

This past year there were several hunters found dead hanging in their safety systems, two in one week in Ohio. On October 27, 2008 a 48 year old man in Portage County was found deceased hanging about 25 feet from the ground and on November 2, 2008 a 35 year old man in Carroll County was found deceased hanging 20 feet from the ground. One of the victims had a cell phone with him. And that is the point; you may not even have time to use a cell phone if you are ever caught suspended from your treestand.

In the industrial workplace, the prompt response time for emergency personnel to reach a suspended worker is approximately six (6) minutes. If you are able to contact someone do you think they could be there in 6 minutes? If you currently own a full body safety harness, take a good look at the warning labels. You will probably find one that says "PROLONGED HARNESS SUSPENSION CAN BE FATAL". And the manufactures are serious; everyone needs to be aware of suspension trauma and how it can harm you.

Let me be absolutely clear, everyone should ALWAYS wear a full body safety harness whenever in a treestand; it can save your life. You should be connected to the tree from the time you leave the ground until the time you get back down. There are plenty of different harnesses, the Rescue One CDS (Controlled Descent System), Non-CDS harnesses with suspension relief straps, Ascend/Descend Safety Lines and Lineman's Ropes available on the market today to keep you safe, and you should always be using them correctly as instructed.


So let's see how suspension trauma can be fatal. You first need to know a little about how your blood circulation works. The heart is nothing more than a living mechanical pump; to force blood out it must have a steady supply of blood coming in. The less blood returning to the heart the lower the blood pressure drops. Blood returns to the heart by the veins from the entire body. The blood then goes through the 1st half of the heart to the lungs to pick up oxygen and then back to the 2nd half of the heart where it is pumped back out to the body through the arteries.

As the blood leaves the heart it has significant pressure from the pumping action. But when the blood starts to return to the heart, the pressure is very low, it just seeps. This is because the blood has gone from the large arteries down to the microscopic capillaries and back to the veins. It is like putting a garden hose up against a large sponge. The water just seeps through and has very little pressure behind it.

When you are wearing a full body harness, like you always should, and if you fall from your treestand you will first be thankful that you're not lying on the ground either dead or busted up. But you only have a few minutes to get back to your feet. You can start feeling the effects of suspension trauma very quickly, and this is why. Your body's weight is pushing down on your leg straps so hard that it is causing a tourniquet affect on the large veins in your legs. This pressure stops the blood in the legs from returning back up to your heart.

The powerful heart can pump the arterial blood down into your legs, but the low pressure venous blood can't get back up. And this is the bad news; this is called Blood Pooling and the legs can store up to half of your total blood volume. It is just like having a major blood loss of about half of your blood without it ever leaving the body. It is the same thing as cutting both of your wrists and loosing half of your blood, and you know how long you would live that way. The longer you hang in your harness the less and less blood there is to circulate through the heart and lungs to keep you alive. Meaning your blood pressure starts to drop the moment you start being suspended because the heart has less and less blood to pump. Now the heart sensing this loss in volume increases its rate and pumps harder to try to keep the pressure up. It is killing you at an increasingly faster rate. The faster and harder your heart pumps, the more blood that goes into your legs where it pools, unable to return to the circulation.

You are now in a rapid downward spiral to death. But the body has a safety mechanism if this happens. It is called fainting. If the body has a significant drop in blood pressure you pass out because of the lack of oxygen to the brain. You fall to the ground and lay in a horizontal position and the blood returns to your heart and brain and you wake up. The bad news for you is that your harness is keeping you in the worse possible position if this happens; it keeps you in a vertical position. If you cannot get back to a standing position either back on your stand, on the ground or on a suspension relief strap to get the pressure off of your legs so the blood starts circulating again, you will become a suspension trauma victim pretty quick. It is only a matter of time and you will never know how much time you have.

So while you're hanging in your harness, your blood pressure is dropping by the second. There is less and less circulating blood to your heart and brain so there is less oxygen to keep you alive. You will begin to feel really bad and your heart will be pounding out of your chest as it pumps harder and harder trying to keep the pressure up. In just a couple of minutes the pain from the leg straps cutting into your groin will be unbearable. Your lower legs will go numb and your breathing will become rapid and more and more difficult as you struggle to stay alive.

You will be exhausted and dying, and without the right equipment on you, there is nothing you can do to stop it. As the blood pressure and oxygen reach a critical low level you pass out thinking of your loved ones. After becoming unconscious the heart will continue to pump as hard as it can in a futile attempt to live. As the blood pressure and oxygen level continues to drop, your brain experiences oxygen starvation and is forever damaged.

Your heart then experiences oxygen starvation and since it cannot adequately pump any longer, slows and finally stops altogether when it experiences a massive global myocardial infarction or heart attack when it runs out of oxygen.

In just a very few minutes, you have gone from having a great time being back in the woods doing what you love, to being killed while hanging in your safety harness. Your family, friends or the emergency personnel will find your lifeless body and lower it to the ground. The loss to your family will be insurmountable, a horrific tragedy that could have been prevented. And this exact scenario happens every year, several times.

There is one more vital piece of information that you must know and this has to do with the blood that has pooled in your legs. While hanging in your harness, the large amount of blood that has been pumped into your legs has changed considerably. In a couple of minutes all of the oxygen has been used up by the leg muscles and when that is gone, the muscle cells start what is called anaerobic metabolism or no oxygen metabolism to stay alive.

During anaerobic metabolism the muscles cells dump a large amount of acidic by-products that are toxic in large amounts back into the blood. At this same time since the blood is no longer moving micro blood clots can start forming in as little as 6 seconds. So what was once life sustaining blood has become a toxic sludge with clots and no oxygen.

And this is what you must remember. If you have been suspended in a harness for more than just a couple of minutes and if by some way you are able to perform a self rescue or if someone rescues you DO NOT LIE DOWN. If you do, all of that toxic sludge which was once blood will go racing back to your heart and you may die right there from a fatal cardiac arrest or a few days later from acute kidney or liver failure.

You need to stay upright for at least 30 to 40 minutes to allow the slow introduction of the pooled blood back into the circulation. If you must, sit down with your back up against a tree to keep your upper body elevated. Get back on your feet as soon as you can.

Massive global myocardial infarction makes falling sound nice.

+1.....I've had way more close calls getting into and out of a ladder stand than in my climbers....I think they seem less dangerous and people lower their guard a little. They can be real slick when they're wet....make sure the steps have grip tape, check the straps and supports before you start climbing (the legs like to sink in and start pulling apart) and wear shoes suited to climbing a ladder

Hunted out of a couple ladder stands that were on the edge of drops last year. I have no intention of sitting or standing in one without a harness. Killed my buck while sitting on a folding seat against a cedar tree. It was actually my first archery buck from the ground and a method I intend to use more often. Especially if hunting alone.

Hunted for the first time in a stand last season and can't imagine being in a tree without one. Met a couple of guys pulling an elk out of a marsh. One guy wasn't worth a damn in the effort. Turns out he could barely move as a result of the massive bruise on his chest from falling out of his stand the day before. Nastiest bruise I've ever seen. That dude was lucky.

Just do it

Who cares I would rather wear one and be around to hunt another day, a good friend who lived to hunt broke his back in a fall from a treestand, he still hunts but was never the same.

I drew one of the coveted Camp Ripley Archery hunt tags in Minnesota several years ago. About 8;30 on Saturday morning, I started hearing bullhorns, sirens, and choppers on the move and was getting a little worried, as no military training was scheduled for that weekend. The thought of accidentally being too close to a live fire exercise crossed my mind, but as it turns out, all the noise was from a deer hunter who fell asleep in his stand, went over the side and broke his back and stuck one of his arrows through his leg. I don't care if I'm in a 40 foot square tree house, I'll be wearing a harness.

One falls the same distance whether a climber or ladder stand. If you have a dizzy spell or suffer some medical complication while up in your stand and you fall out you are guaranteed to either die or be paralyzed for life.

What are the thoughts on recovering from a harnessed fall by grabbing onto the tree and shinnying back up?

How are you suspended in relation to the tree when you fall with various types of harnesses? I don't want to end up dead from Suspension Trauma either.

I have the HSS vest. Attachment point is top center of the back. At the bottom are crotch/harness straps. So, if I were to fall, I'd be hanging from the tree, completely vertical with the weight being supported through the crotch. However, once in the stand and attached, if set-up properly, you aren't gonna fall any lower than the platform you are standing on.

remfak touched on an important point. When you set your safety harness, make the height so that you can't fall completely out of your stand. You should be suspended close enough that you can raise your foot and step back on to it and relieve the pressure to avoid the problems mentioned above.

I'm strapped in once I get up into my ladder stands. There is no way I'd be without a harness while in a stand. Don't have anything while climbing though.

Went for years and years without wearing one then met a guy who's confined to a wheelchair for life because of a fall from a ladder stand...now I don't get in a tree without my safety harness.

pretty good video of an easy way to relieve the suspension trauma if you happen to fall.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6T8rP9l60eg&feature=player_embedded

You can remind the pards that gave you guff as you push them to their stand in their wheel chair.

I use one...I've been know to take a noon nap every now and then.

I figure I owe it to my kids that I wear one.

Hey guys thanks for the supportive posts. I know what the right answer is it just surprises me how many people feel they can save them selves in a ladder stand. I have a seat of the pants Summit it works just fine fo me. Buckfever 1

We use those for our Hunters Safety classes. They work well, and are pretty easy to put on.