My tree stand arrived Friday, and I spent all of Saturday morning trying to assemble it, and find videos about how to assemble/climb with it. Now- I'm not an idiot. I'm a machinist by trade, I have decades of experience as a mechanic, assembler, and engineer. With that said- the directions were AWFUL. 95% of the multi-page manual was "don't ever, Ever, EVER use this stand without a harness"... blah, blah, blah- "can't sue us because we warned you 99 times". The instructions for assembly were vague at best. The pictures were either too close to understand where they were zooming in on, or too far away to see what they were doing. The parts list showed everything included, but never explained where everything went. 3 hours later, I ended up with 3 extra straps that I STILL don't know what they're for. BTW- neither YouTube nor the Summit website have an "Unboxing and assembly" video for this model (or if youtube had one, I couldn't find it. Lots of tree stand vids- but not for THIS model). They DO however have a video on using the safety harness (as if they hadn't beat that horse to death already), and it TOO doesn't show this exact model, just a list of DON'Ts to cover their corporate asses. As for the packaging- my box arrived undamaged and unopened, but the contents were pretty jumbled. The cardboard spacers were all over the place, and the powder coating was scratched off down to the steel in a few places- 3"+ long scratches (see photos). The safety harness. Is. AWFUL. It looks like a jumbled mess of seatbelt straps. Nothing is labeled, and you have to wrestle with it and figure out how it goes. You really need someone to help you from behind to make sure the straps aren't twisted, and that you have everything right. The very first thing I did after using this ONCE, was to go home and start shopping for a new safety harness. It's really that bad. Ok- enough with the complaints. The unit was well-made, and very sturdy. It weighs 29 lbs, but once it was on my back, it felt more like 15. I went into the woods to test it out and do some scouting. After watching two videos on climbing with a Summit stand- I was able to set it up in about 4 minutes, and I'd say it took another 3 to get up the tree. It was even easier than the videos made it look. Getting down looked hard, but it wasn't at all. It's sturdy up in the tree, but I realized that due to the placement of the safety strap (and the relative shortness of the tether) that it was going to get in the way of my draw if I had to shoot to the right. The seat was comfortable, and I look forward to using this all season. If you're buying this stand- do yourself a favor and buy a better safety harness right away.
