"If I was buying a climbing stand, I'd look for a stand where you can sit either facing the tree or facing away from it," he said. "If you sit back against the tree, that makes for an excellent bowhunting stand. If you face the tree, you've got something to brace your rifle on. And it helps if you can stand up in the stand when you hunt with a bow. The good thing is, a lot of companies are building climbers with really big platforms now."

But there are drawbacks even to Pye's favorite climbers.

"With a climber, you're limited to the kind of tree you can climb -- you pretty much have to find pole timber: trees without any limbs. And it's hard to find a perfect tree," he said. "For that reason, I like to make sure I've found a good tree at least a day before I go hunting. You won't want to be out there before dark looking for a tree, then start to climb it and find out too late that it's dead or has branches you can't get past.

"What I like to do is find the tree from which I'm going to hunt the day before I hunt, and I like to take my stand and put it around the tree, on the ground. I'll put my safety belt on, climb only a foot or so off the ground, then stand up and kind of jump up and down on it to make sure it's going to be safe."

Pye, who is a robust 6-footer, also pays careful attention to his stands' specifics, be they ladders, fixed-position or climbers.

"You need to always make sure that the weight limit on the stand is more than your weight," he said. "Don't even buy a tree stand -- no matter how good a deal it is -- if you weigh more than the limit. If you do, it won't be a good deal."

TRIPODS
Tripod stands are perhaps the hardest to move around and set up of any "portable" stands, but they can provide hunters with an elevated shooting platform in areas where there are no other options.

"When there are no trees big enough for a ladder stand, a fixed-position stand or a climber, you can always put up a tripod," Pye said. "Whether you're hunting in a clearcut or over short bushes or whatever, you can put up a tripod, and you can get above anything and be able to look over the cover. That's what makes a tripod an effective stand."

Pye said that tripods can be put up in almost any situation where any of the other stands works, simply by assembling the legs, attaching the shooting platform and raising the stand. But it's in areas without big trees, or areas where you need to have elevation above thick cover, that tripods are at their best.

"A tripod is one of the most versatile stands you can hunt from," he said. "You can get up anywhere from 6 to 25 feet off the ground, and you can swivel the seat around. Most of the time, there's a rail all the way around the seat that makes a good rifle rest, but you can also bowhunt out of it."

Pye said that, typically, the rail that surrounds the stand is metal and needs to be insulated to keep the noise down.