Broke My back!!!


Mirage

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Well it happend yesterday. I was taking down a treestand ladder type and the stand broke in half sending me down to ground and hard I landed on my feet at first and dropped to my back. I have a compression fracture of my L1 vertabrey. I can walk but it hurts bad and im on some pain killers among some other stuff. I see a specialist tommorow. I wasnt using a saftey harnness. I am dumb and are paying the price for it. So guys and gals please for your family and you use a safety harness. This accident will set me back probably 6 weeks. I have insurance to help that I pay extra for but I will miss this years hunting. And that hurts alot!!! So please guys be safe and i will let you know what the doctor says tomorrow. About rehab and such.

Thanks Sean

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Thanks, i will see the specialst today. I have been up and down treestands for the last 20 years and never had I had a problem until this one. The stand was only 2 years old. if had used a secure line tied to the top of the tree and a persit knot i would have been saved. I only fell may13 feet but man what a hard landing and it happed in less than a second. Just be safe. I always thought this could never happen to me. And it did. i just thank GOD for saving me from the worst. Be safe please

Thanks Sean

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Ugh that stinks. Sorry to hear this man, get better soon. :( Sounds like it could have been a lot worse though.

Thats the truth. I hope nobody has to ever go through this. I always wear a safety belt while hunting but hardly ver when im putting up a ladder type but that will have to change.!!

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First, glad you are alive and can walk.

Second, when putting up a ladder stand, take your portable or borrow one. Climb to the ladder plaform and secure it from the saftey of the portable with your harness on.

Lastly, there are several safety systems available for use with ladder stands. Summit makes one called angelwings. There is also a good looking one that uses a seatbelt tensioner that will allow you to climb up and down while hooked in and will stop a fall. When you climb down, you can hook it to a bottom step of the stand and then attach next time you need to climb.

Best of luck

New

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I just got back from the doctors office and he says time will heal this. He want to do onther x ray in a week to compare to seeif the compresion has gotten worse. He says it looks pretty good though. On a side note he said he couldnt tell me how many people come in there falling from a treestand. So please be carefull. the doc syas about 4 weeks and I should be ok as long as I take it easy. This will be hard for me because i like to work and stay busy. I will take his advice and listen to him. I jst dont know about going to maryland this october maybe novmber. I ordered the plane ticket today but may have to push it back to novmber. it will be a better time to hunt right in the rut. i just didnt want to wait that long. But now I have to

Be safe

sean

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Bummer...but like a few others have said, I don't see how a safety harness would have helped you in that situation with a ladder stand. Maybe I'm wrong but it sounds like the middle stabilizer bar was attached to the tree while you were climbing up the stand to attach the top of the stand to the tree. When you got close to the top, the top came away from the tree and broke above the stabilizer bar dropping you to the ground with upper half of the stand on top of you. I use a climbing belt when I put up hang on stands but I'm too far from the tree to attach to it with both my climbing belt or a safety belt when it comes to going up to the top of ladder stands. Once you get there that's different.

For what it's worth now here's the safest method I've found for putting up and taking down ladder stands. If there's another way that's safer, I haven't figured it out yet.

Attach 2 ropes (at least twice as long as the ladder is tall) to each side of the ladder stand at the top. Crisscross the ropes around the back side of the tree as high as possible to the top of the stand. If you have a buddy with you have him wrap them around his back side keeping the rope tight while you climb up to tighten the stand or lossen it and climb down if you're taking the stand down. If you don't have a buddy with you come back to each ladder leg about 5' above the ground by a step and after having tied a loop in the rope about 2 1/2' to 3' from the leg wrap the rope around the leg, go back through the loop with the rope, come back to the leg and pull the rope tight. Then tie each rope off after it's tight. The rope will help (in a big way) to keep the ladder stand secure against the tree while it's not otherwise secured to the tree at the top of the stand with the chain or ratchet that comes with it (if that's how it's supposed to attach to the tree).

You can also do the same crisscross secure method using 2 ratchet straps if you have 2 that are long enough to crisscross behind the tree and come back to the ladder legs.

Maybe this little bit of advice will help prevent some other accidents with preparing ladder stands to hunt in the future.

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