OH: Writer chronicles tree-stand catastrophe

Writer chronicles tree-stand catastrophe

Posted by degan
February 27, 2009 10:15AM

Outdoors Editor Mike Dreadin speaks of his recent experience with a survivor's joy tempered by the stark realization of how close he was to never talking again.

On Jan. 30, the Uriah native lived through a deer hunter's worst nightmare: a tree-stand mishap that, within a split second, left him dangling upside down by his feet more than 40 feet off the ground.

In Dreadin's case, the nightmare was made even more horrific, he said, because one spot on the 1-inch-wide foot straps that kept him from falling had been chewed by squirrels to a width of barely one-half inch.

"I had been hanging there for about five minutes when I was able to pull myself back up and grab the bottom of the stand," he said. "When I saw how the squirrels had chewed the straps, I eased back down because I didn't want to put any more pressure on it. Through the whole thing, I just knew it was going to break at any second." .

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