I guess it should come as no surprise that tree stand accidents are on the increase. If you have been following trends in the world of hunting, it’s also apparent that the use of tree stands has dramatically increased in recent years. When I started hunting in the 60’s a tree stand was a couple of boards nailed to a couple of suitable limbs — a few more pieces of scrap lumber nailed to the tree trunk got you into the stand. I actually killed my first buck, a six-pointer, after I shinnied up a tree trunk and stood on two limbs — fortunately, I didn’t have to stand their long before the buck walked nearly directly under me and I nailed it.

Boy, have things changed when it comes to the pursuit of deer. I have no way of knowing for sure, but I’m guessing that when it comes to archery hunting for deer, I would not be surprised to find that 80 percent of the hunters use some type of tree stand. I’m betting that a very high percentage of hunters use tree stands during the regular rifle season as well. It’s also true that the tree stand market has responded well to our demands with newer and better tree stands of all sizes and types. With so many hunters turning to the use of tree stands it would also make sense that there are increasingly more tree stand accidents.

If you do much hunting, you probably know somebody who fell or was injured in a tree stand accident. It wasn’t too many years ago a hunter in our area died when his stand gave way. A few years ago a good friend of mine fell from his tree stand and laid on the ground for some time before someone on a four-wheeler just happened to spot him and get him emergency care. A few years ago while descending a tree with my climber type stand it slipped — fortunately my safety harness did its job, and I only ended up with a black eye when my head bounced off the tree trunk.

In an article, I recently read in Pennsylvania Outdoor News Dr. Joseph Smith, a doctor in the intensive care unit at Geisinger Medical Center, has compiled some interesting statistics that may shed some light on what’s going on out there. I’ll try to summarize a bit.

Between 1987 and 2015 more than 1,200 people fell out of tree stands here in Pennsylvania. Bear in mind that these figures do not take into account people who did not choose to receive treatment but only those who sought treatment at an accredited medical center. It was also found that 97 percent of the victims were male. That stands to reason since I assume the vast majority of archery hunters and even gun hunters are male. The average height from which they fell was 17 feet. Researchers believe that 82 percent of the victims were archers. Now here are some numbers that I was shocked to read — of 1,109 victims that were examined, 46 were legally drunk! Those were the ones technically “inebriated”, how many more of them were “impaired” but not legally drunk? Drug tests were conducted on 285 fall victims, and 14 percent of them had marijuana in their systems. Remember — those same people are driving down the road every day as well. As you might expect Saturdays were the worst day for falls — naturally that’s when most of the hunting occurs. Fifty-two percent fell because of structural failure. Now here’s the number that really caught my eye — 93 percent of those who fell were not wearing a safety harness!

I’m out of space for this column, but clearly, we could greatly alter these numbers by doing one simple thing-get a safety harness and wear it!