Okay guys, I need some suggestions for making my ladder stand a a bit more quiet. It seems when you climb up in the thing it wants to rattle and squeak like crazy. That can be quite disturbing on those dead-calm still mornings. Last year I had a really nice eight pt. coming right to me and when I moved my feet a little to get in a better position for the shot, the stand made just the slightest noise. The buck stopped in his tracks and looked around and ended up walking back the way he came. Felt bad at the time but two days later, my son-in-law killed him from a different stand and it was his very first buck ever. So I felt a little more positive after that. Anyway, anyone have any suggestions about a way to make it less noisy? Blessings......Pastorjim
Make sure all of the nuts and bolts are very tight on it. Make sure all of the straps are very tight to the tree. If those two things don't take care of it, get an extra ratchet strap or two and put in different places on the stand to make sure that it is extremely tight to the tree. I have a double stand that has teeth that sit against the tree where I sit and also another set that is where my feet are. I have a single that only has one set of teeth against the tree and the foot platform is bolted on to it. If those bolts are not tight, you will get a squeek. Just a thought, maybe you could use some no scent gun oil on those bolts. Just a thought.
Go to lowes or a hardware shop and get you some teflon washers. I had a big game lock on that make some noise used them and made sure all th bolts were nice and tight
The only time I have problems with either of mine is when the straps arent tight enough. It has teflon washers on it already. There is the occasional noise when climbing in and out of it due to the quick release pins but, if we have them set right and have a productive year out of them I will leave them where they are and put bolts with teflon washers in place of the pins. Other than the gun oil idea, Theres not much else I have found other than teflon washers and giving them a quick ratchet on the way up every time.
I can't remember where I read this, but thought it was a good suggestion. Take a ratchet strap and hook it to the bottom rung and run the other end up towards the seat and tighten the "vertical" part of the ladder together. Do this in conjunction with your regular strapping to the tree. Some of these ladder stands have play in them where they connect to each other. I tried this last year and noticed a big difference.....much quieter! Hope it helps.
Thanks for all the replies guys. I tried to fiqure out what all was making noise and this is what I found. First, it has a shooting rail that seemed to be rattling quite a bit. I put nylon washers at all pivot points. and used electrical tape on the slip joints and that seemed to help that tremendously. Next was the ladder. Again I put nylon washers on all the pivot points and made sure I tightened all the bolts. Where the ladder sections join I'm putting a thin coat of spray-on undercoating so there is minimal metal to metal contact. I also sprayed the undercoating on the metal brace bar that goes against the tree. The jury is still out on the spray-on undercoating but we'll see what happens. It already seems as if the noise has been greatly reduced. Again, thanks to everyone for your suggestions. Blessings......Pastorjim
Also, on the shooting rail, you can put some pipe rapping that you would use for water lines around it and use cloth camo tape to hold it all on. That should make the rail 100% silent. I am thinking of doing this with some bars on my summit but I haven't got to it yet.
I believe I will be buying some camo ratchet straps and doing this. Not sure why I didn't think of this before. Thanks for that.
One of my ladder stands used to make a lot of noise too. It had the pins with the metal "D" clips, and they rattled a lot. I just used electrical tape to make sure they didnt bounce around. Also, the strap up the ladder helped out a ton.
