A bowhunter waits for deer in a tree stand.
P.J. Reilly
Pennsylvania hunters are now more likely to be injured in a fall from a tree stand, than from a gunshot.
The average age of hunters who fall from tree stands is 45.
Hunters who fall 17 feet from a stand tend to survive. Hunters who fall 24 feet often die.
A Pennsylvania hunter who spends 50 years in the woods chasing deer with both bow and gun has a 1 in 20 chance of being injured in a fall from a tree stand at some time during his or her hunting career.
“That’s a staggering number that is really concerning to us,” said Andrew Hueser, the Pennsylvania Game Commission’s administrator of the hunter-trapper education program.
SAFETY AWARENESS MONTH
August is Tree Stand Safety Awareness Month. Last week…
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Exposing the Big Game 
Way to go! Captain Watson gets his wish!
Twenty-eight feet seems like the optimal height for a tree stand. Good visibility, fresher air, and cooler air, reducing the beer’s ice requirement. The article must be wrong about harnesses, though. Surely we all know a friend who has a cousin that knows a guy that survived a horrific car-crash because he was thrown clear of the vehicle because he refused to wear unsafe seat-belts, and everyone else died strapped into the fiery flames and shrapnel when the liquor bottles began bursting inside the car. With a harness on, you are sure to be crushed when the stand and cooler crash down on you. How much better to be able to jump clear–another reason 28′ is optimal, it gives the hunter more time to get clear and prepare for a soft landing, hell, maybe even throw in a 1-1/2 twisting Jacobi on the way down with head-first entry. That’s how the real manly hunters do it!
Good advice for all who use them!
I am just wondering if being drunk increases or decreases their chance of survival? Should we encourage them to have another beer or not?
I live in Pennsylvania and many tree stands are built by their grandfather, the tradition is to sit where their grandfather sat many many years ago, with wood nailed to the tree for a ladder.
One guy tied a rope around himself and tree, he dozed off and fell out, they found him dangling from the tree.
Perhaps we need a federal law mandating that all tree stands must be higher than 17′ since that seems to be the threshold under which survival is likely? What would I prefer for the shooter, paralysis or death? It’s a perplexing moral dilemma.