Photo by Ron Sinfelt.

Thirty years ago, my father packed me off to college with the usual array of clothes, school supplies and spending money, but in the trunk of my little VW Bug, he placed my first portable tree stand for those free mornings and afternoons when the Oconee National Forest beckoned.

He'd built two or three of them in his basement shop soon after he and a handful of co-workers discovered the joys of archery hunting -- specifically, that it gave you a month's head start on the guys who stuck to rifles and shotguns.

And my first one wasn't just a tree stand, but a climber with a heavy plywood platform, strong angle-iron supports and an old, discarded, sharpened lawn mower blade to cut into the tree trunk and help hold the stand in place.

A pair of straps screwed into the platform served two purposes -- I could slide the toes of my boots into them and pull the stand up the tree trunk while hanging onto my hand climber, or I could fit my arms through the straps and carry it into the woods on my back -- like a huge backpack.

The stand weighed a ton, but for several years, it was my ticket to getting off the forest floor and up where I could see what was going on below. And it was stable; I never feared falling when I stood to nock an arrow or slip off the safety of my rifle.

Portable tree stands were a novelty back in the mid-1970s. Now, they're an integral part of a deer hunter's bag of tricks. It's hard to find someone who heads into the woods regularly who doesn't have a stand chained or belted to a white oak, who hasn't climbed into an aluminum ladder stand that was attached to a pine, slid a climber up a gum tree or set up the legs of a tripod along the edge of a cutover swamp.

Each stand has its place and time in the hunting world. Figuring out which stand to use in which situation is knowledge acquired through trial and error -- or by paying attention to long-time hunting guide David Pye of ARC Outdoors.

Pye divides manufactured stands into four basic categories: fixed-position, ladders, climbers or tripods. There is a time and place for each type of stand, he said, and situations where a certain kind of stand, well, stands out.

"Each kind of stand has its own best uses -- that's what they're made for," Pye said.

FIXED-POSITION STANDS
Normally, a fixed-position stand incorporates a solid platform and some type of seat. The stand is attached to a tree with a chain, belt or some other kind of strap that encircles the trunk.

Seat and platform types and sizes differ by manufacturer, but fixed-position stands generally allow hunters the opportunity to stay seated or stand up -- or any combination thereof.

They are generally the lightest and most compact of all portable tree stands. Hunting from a fixed-position stand generally requires a hunter to bring with him some kind of steps by which he can climb into his stand. Screw-in steps are very popular but prohibited by some states on public-hunting lands. Steps that come with some kind of strap that encircles the tree to be climbed are also very common.