Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, September 11, 1993 TAG: 9309120083
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C-12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Bill Cochran
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Last year, Turner slipped as he started down the ladder of his stand after a morning hunt on his Bedford County dairy farm.
He was one of hundreds of hunters across the country injured in tree-stand accidents. Some years, plunges from tree stands have claimed the lives of as many hunters in Virginia as firearms accidents. A survey conducted by Deer & Deer Hunting Magazine this year revealed that more than one in three hunters nationwide has fallen from a stand.
Turner's stand was built into a triple hickory in a grove of trees along the edge of a corn field. He had climbed into it before daylight and watched for a buck until 8 a.m., then it was time to return to his chores on the farm.
When Turner strapped his gun onto his back and started down the ladder, one of his feet slipped.
"I grabbed for a limb and the limb broke off and spun me around," he said. "I was heading toward a rock pile as big as a car."
By doing some mid-air maneuvering, Turner managed to avoid most of the rocks. But one bashed one of his kneecaps, peeling it loose and pushing it about eight inches up his leg.
At first, Turner didn't think he was badly injured.
"I said, `I took that fall and didn't get hurt.' My gun was on my back when I left the tree and when I ended up it was under me. The stock was busted," he said. "I stood up and backed against the tree. There was an old dead limb there, and I said I was going to use that for a crutch."
Turner had parked his pickup about 150 yards away. When he started toward it, he covered about 30 yards, then the crutch went one way and he fell the other.
He tried to get up a couple of times but couldn't.
It was then, he said, that he realized he'd been banged up pretty badly. Not only was his knee damaged, one of his shoulders had been dislocated when he grabbed the limb on the way down.
"The more I tried to move, the more my knee would bleed," he said.
So Turner resolved to stay put until help came.
"A neighbor was running some dogs in the woods, so I listened to them for a while."
When the dog music faded, Turner made friends with a small caterpillar that was crawling around him.
Two hours later, Turner's brother, Bill, realized something had gone wrong and came looking for him.
With a new deer season approaching, Turner knows it soon will be time to climb back into his stand, stiff knee and all.
"I have been over there two or three times since I fell. I haven't climbed back up it again, but I will," he said.
Is he going to do anything differently this time?
"Just be more careful," he said.
Tree-stand accidents are so common that manufacturers of portable stands say nearly 40 percent of the cost of their new products goes for liability insurance and legal defense.
The Deer & Deer Hunting study revealed that older stands, made in the 1970s, were most often cited for slips and structural failures. Most accidents fit the pattern of Turner's fall. They occur when the hunters are ascending or descending.
Nearly 50 percent of the participants in the Deer & Deer Hunting survey said they always use a safety belt when hunting from a tree stand, but only 20 percent wear a safety belt when they are most likely to fall - getting into or out of a stand.
by CNB