How to Hang Climbing Sticks

Hanging climbing sticks is the part of mobile hunting where you are most exposed, and it is the part almost nobody is taught. You are fifteen feet up, in the dark, with a pack on, using both hands to tension a strap around a tree, which means you are not holding onto anything. Get the sequence right and that is completely routine. Get it wrong and it is the exact situation that fills the treestand accident statistics.

The whole technique reduces to one principle: you are attached to the tree from the moment your feet leave the ground until they return to it. Everything below is in service of that.

Before you leave the truck

Put the harness on there, not at the tree. A harness put on in the dark at the base of a tree, with a pack to set down and cold hands, is a harness put on badly or not at all. Put it on at the vehicle, confirm the leg loops and chest strap are right over the layers you are actually wearing, and walk in wearing it.

Know your kit in the dark.Lineman’s rope, tether, sticks, platform. You should be able to identify each by feel. Practice the whole setup at ground level in daylight before you ever do it for real — on a tree in your yard, at knee height, until the sequence is automatic.

Wrap the sticks. Steel and aluminum sticks clattering together will announce you for the last two hundred yards. Foam pipe insulation or strips of an old sleeping mat, banded tight. This is free and it is the difference between a quiet walk in and an alarmed doe.

Choosing the tree

The tree decides the hunt more than the gear does. Four things to check before you commit, ideally scouted in advance rather than decided at 5 a.m.

• Wind.First, always. Your scent has to be going somewhere the deer are not. A whitetail carries roughly 297 million olfactory receptors to a dog’s 220 million, and height does not beat that — it only buys you a little time before your scent settles. Our scent control guide covers the hierarchy.
• Straightness and diameter. Your straps have a stated tree-diameter range. A tree that is too big means straps that do not reach; a tree that leans badly means sticks that sit at an awkward angle and a platform you fight all day.
• Cover behind you. A hunter silhouetted against open sky is visible from a long way. A tree with branches or a second trunk behind you breaks up your outline for free.
• A shooting lane you can actually use. Being twenty feet up with no clear window is a wasted climb. Check where you can shoot from the ground first.

Clear the branches you will climb past before you leave the ground. Trimming while hanging off a stick with a saw in one hand is how people fall.

The sequence

Step 1: attach the lineman’s rope on the ground

Wrap the lineman’s rope around the trunk and clip both ends into the side D-rings of your harness while you are still standing on the ground. You now lean back into the rope, your weight is supported by it, and both hands are free.

This is the single most important step on the page. From here until you switch to your tether at height, you never disconnect.

Step 2: hang the first stick low

Set the first stick so the lowest step is around knee height. Low is deliberate: it means you step onto it rather than climbing up to it, and it means the sticks stack to a predictable height.

Tension the strap or rope hard. Then load the step with your full weight while you are still standing on the ground. If something is going to slip, you want it to slip now.

Step 3: climb one stick, advance the rope, hang the next

The repeating loop, and the rhythm to build:

1. Step up onto the stick you just hung.
2. Slide the lineman’s rope up the trunk to above your head and re-tension it so you are leaning back into it. Do this before you reach for the next stick, every single time.
3. Hang the next stick with both hands, tension it hard.
4. Load it with your weight before you commit to it.

The step that gets skipped when people are cold or in a hurry is advancing the rope. Skipping it means you are hanging a stick above your attachment point, and a slip there is a genuine fall onto a taut rope with your body below it. Advance the rope first, always.

Step 4: spacing

Space each stick so the bottom step of the next one lands at a comfortable stride from the top step of the last, or slightly below it. The temptation is to spread them for extra height on fewer sticks. Resist it.

The reason: you have to come down these in reverse, at last light, tired, with a pack on and possibly a deer to deal with. A stretch that was fine going up at 5 a.m. is a reach in the dark at 6 p.m., and reaching in the dark is where accidents live. Space for the worst version of yourself.

Step 5: the platform and the changeover

At height, hang your platform or stand and tension it properly. Then:

1. Attach your tether to the trunk above your head.
2. Clip the tether to your harness bridge or D-ring.
3. Take your weight on the tether to confirm it holds.
4. Only thenremove the lineman’s rope.

Two attachment points overlapping, briefly, is the correct state. Zero attachment points, briefly, is the mistake. This changeover is the moment that catches experienced hunters out because it feels safe — you are standing on a platform, everything is set, and it is tempting to unclip the rope first because it is in the way.

Coming down is the more dangerous half

You are tired, the light has gone, you may have adrenaline from a shot, and everything happens in reverse. Run the sequence backwards deliberately:

1. Attach the lineman’s rope while still on the platform.
2. Confirm it is tensioned and holding your weight.
3. Remove the tether.
4. Descend one stick at a time, sliding the rope down ahead of you and keeping it tensioned.
5. Pull sticks on the way down if you are taking them.

If you have shot a deer, sit for a few minutes before you climb down. Adrenaline makes people careless with a routine they would otherwise do perfectly, and the deer will still be there in ten minutes.

The aider question

An aider is a short webbing ladder hanging from a stick step, adding one or two steps below it. Three sticks plus aiders can reach what four sticks reach, which is a real weight saving for a hunter carrying gear a long way.

It is also a genuine skill. Aiders swing under you, they demand more balance and more upper-body commitment, and the failure mode is worse than stepping on a fixed stick. Our position: learn to climb confidently on a full set of sticks first, then add aiders deliberately, in daylight, at ground level, until they are boring. They are an efficiency upgrade for a competent climber, not a shortcut for a new one.

The rules to check before you hang anything

Public-land regulations on stands and sticks vary widely and they are enforced. Screw-in steps are prohibited in many places. Some units prohibit leaving anything overnight. Some require a visible name and contact tag on stands and sticks. Some set a hard removal date. The consequence for getting it wrong is usually confiscation of your gear.

Check with the agency that manages the specific ground you are hunting, every season, because these change. Our public-land treestand rules guide covers the questions to ask.

The short version

Harness on at the truck. Lineman’s rope on before your feet leave the ground. Advance the rope before every stick, not after. Load every step before you trust it. Space sticks for a tired hunter in the dark. Overlap your attachment points at the changeover. Reverse it all deliberately on the way down.

That routine takes ten minutes and it is what makes mobile hunting on a budget a reasonable thing to do. The sticks themselves are in our budget climbing stick roundup, and the harness and lineman’s rope that the whole sequence depends on are in our budget safety harness roundup.