HUNTING
SADDLE UP Lightweight, portable gear makes tree hunting easier BY T. EDWARD NICKENS
88 HUNT & FISH | 2021
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f Spiderman was a deer hunter, this is how he’d roll: Shimmy up a tree, quiet as a caterpillar. He’d tether to a stout branch or bole and sit back in comfort, enveloped in the forest canopy. No clanky climbing stand. No bulky chain-on platform. Just melt away into the leaves, still, until it’s time to let the arrow fly. That describes a popular and fast-growing hunting tactic known as tree saddle hunting. It’s gained a serious following among archers, and it’s making its way into the gun-hunting ranks as well, thanks to an emphasis on light, strong and stealthy equipment that’s as easy to pack into the woods as a water bottle. “What started this trend is that hunters wanted to be more mobile, especially when hunting public land,” says Jason Redd, a passionate North Carolina deer hunter and founder of Timber Ninja Outdoors, which makes the industry’s first-ever carbon fiber climbing sticks. “With a tree saddle system, you’re not tied to that one tree you’ve prepped for a stand, or limited to straight trees with no branches. You can put one of these up in the most crazy-limbed live oaks and hunt safely.” A tree saddle is essentially a climbing harness fine-tuned for deer hunting. Instead of sitting or standing on a bulky, solid platform that has to be hoisted into the branches, hunters rest in a comfortable nylon and webbing saddle that is tethered to the tree trunk, and rest their feet on a small platform. The effect is like sitting in a hammock, with a safety line attached. The equipment is minimalistic: The saddle and its components, lightweight tree-climbing sticks, a lineman’s belt and the small foot platform. There are three primary reasons tree saddles have come on so strong, says Redd. >
