I’ve had a lone wolf hand climber for at least 7 years and have no complaints. Keep an eye on the straps for cracking and you’ll be good. For noise, ease of attachment, and sturdiness on a tree the summits and APIs don’t really compete.
If I could only have one tree stand, it would be a Lone Wolf Alpha Hang On with Climbing Sticks. A climber is lighter, but limits you to straight trees without branches.
Climber, I like the Lone Wolf Alpha Hand Climber
What I use mostly nowadays is a saddle, cut down sticks, and a climbing aider. Most packable and the lightest, allows you to climb pretty much any tree. Not as easy to get set up though, harder to get used to.
If you bow hunt only look at summit open shot and lone wolf hand climber or flip top. Those would be my choices. Style of hunting and your fitness lvl tho needs to be considered. If your not comfortable using a climber and you do everything then the summit viper sd is really hard to beat for an all around stand.
I'm with Brendan. Sticks and a hang on have worked the best for me if I can leave the stand. Perfect when I go in mid-day, set up for an evening followed by a morning sit. Or set up at midnight for a morning sit.
For a climber I have a Summit Open Shot and an X-stand X1. The X is easier to hike with, but not quite as comfy for a full day sit.
In all honesty with climbers there are 3 categories:
Lone wolf
Summit
Everything else
Lone wolf is more packable and quieter. It’s less comfortable than a summit and seems to fail more frequently than summits.
Summit is the king of comfort. They’re bulky and loud in comparison to lone wolf. I’d venture to say they’re safer, can’t say I recall seeing many summit failure threads, but lone wolf climber failures happen with a decent frequency.
Everything else is heavier, bulkier, more cumbersome to set up.
Brendan is right though, if you can only one treestand, make it a quality lock on and sticks. Tree hunting instead of deer hunting gets old.
For a quick 2-4 hour run n gun hunt, my Lone Wolf Assault. For an all day sit, my Summit Viper SD. Both have their place, but the LW gets used a lot more.
I go with the lone wolf had a viper sold it last year and absolutely love my lone wolf hand climber.
A lot of guys don’t like climbers because they think it’s hard to find a tree, but I look at it like this if there’s enough branches that I can’t work my climber on the tree then I can probably climb the tree, then I’ll pull up my climber by hand at attach it to the tree right where I want to sit.
the hand climber seat is actually big enough to stand on. A few time
I have taken my line wolf out with both my son and I, he stands on the platform and I stand in the seat.
Used old man stands for years and finally got smart and got a summit. Very comfortable to sit in awhile and light weight to carry in. The replaceable seat parts and such is great too