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Old Treestands

Old Tree Stands

Recently I was able to find some time to join my brother Cory for our annual Pennsylvania flintlock hunt. We decided to do a small push in the hopes that the deer would somehow let us sneak up on them. It was during one of my slow pushes that I came across an old wooden tree stand. The wood was partially rotten and the stand was barely holding on to the tree. To put it simply, the stand had seen better days.

Cory and I saw a few deer, but nothing close enough for our flintlocks. On the ride back home I kept thinking about that old stand. It reminded me of the many stands I hunted out of when I was younger. I still remember Cory and me sneaking lumber out of Dad’s supply to carry off to the woods to build tree stands. I remember how excited I was and how I was just positive that this stand would help me shoot “a monster”. We never did get that monster out of our homemade stands, but we sure did learn many lessons.   I believe we learned a great deal more from the mistakes we made rather than our successes. I credit those mistakes for allowing me to be the hunter I’ve become.

I think too, things were a lot simpler. We didn’t get caught up in the hype we have today. It simply didn’t matter what name was on your bow or hunting clothes. The bow was whatever you could afford (or Santa brought you) and most of our camouflage was either hand me downs or homemade. Every hunt was magical, each outing held high hopes of a record book buck walking within range of your stand. We had no trail cameras to tell us what was walking around the woods we hunted.

The expectations of the unknown should pull at our hunting souls. It’s the experiences that we should be hunting.

Happy Hunting!

Kevin