I have summit open shot and i alway feel safe in it. I have no problems climbing trees that have some lean to them.
x1,000!!! Invest in a good safety harness and buy the stand you feel you can A) afford and B) be comfortable in. If it's a Summit, great. But if it's a stand from ****'s, then that's OK too, so long as you wear your harness. I understand that not everyone on here can afford a $300 stand -- myself included. But a "good" stand and a "great" harness is still infinitely better than a "great" stand and no harness. You don't trust your life to the stand, you trust it to the harness. I've fallen climbing into a lag-bolted on ladder stand when it was wet. That's the absolute safest type of stand in the world, but without my harness (which I was wearing at the time) it wouldn't have mattered how safe the STAND was. Still, that being said... if you can afford an API or a Lone Wolf or a Summit, I think that the weight advantages of aluminum and the comfort are worth the cost. I'm saving my pennies for a new one next year. But I've had a LOT of fun using my old $135 ****'s Sporting Goods close-out special the last couple of years and never felt unsafe... thanks entirely to my top-of-the-line safety harness system.
