I feel your pain. Most stands are tolerable to assemble. Only 2 were not. One was a Sportsman’s Guide tripod swivel seat with platform about 15 yrs ago. Big and cumbersome anyway but man it was a bear getting that together and then moving it to the lower meadow,nestled against an old Apple tree. It’s still ther, I ain’t movin that ,ever!
The other was a 1.5 wide Sportsman Guide( see the pattern here?) ladderstand. Fought me the entire build, needed ratchet straps and pipe clamps to rack it square enough to assemble and still had to redrill a bunch of holes. To make it worse after I got it mounted to the tree and climbed it I realized every ladder section had a taller step section than the rest of the steps. At first I thought the sections were installed out of order or reversed or something. Pulled it down and re assemble ladder with same results after measuring. No matter how it was assembled there were 2 steps normal height then a weird tall step. Not that bad until winter when you are bundled up and can’t move too good that step is hard to do. Never again will I buy a Sportsmans Guide stand. Oh, and both were shipped in flimsy boxes that were tore up in delivery and missing parts. Sent back,twice! Finally they agreed to ship the box wrapped in another layer of cardboard and taped heavily.

 

That sounds terrible buddy, I can only imagine how irritated you were lol

 

I always ask why I trust my life to a Chinese guy with a Chinese welder. And I wonder if they joke around at the factory about why all the crazy Anericans want to get up in trees!

 

This one came from Vietnam. You know what they say about paybacks.

 

I genuinely hate the things. All of them.

Ok coming in hot, I know they are great for the young and old, and we use them on our private properties too.

My issues are with the amount of junk in the PUBLIC woods from these things and that some people think putting one up reserves the spot for the season, heck some seem to think it's for life. So selfish.

 

Bigbrownie: Sorry to hear of the difficulties with the Big Game Guarding Ladder stand from Rural King. I had good luck with the assembly and solo erection of seven HD 1.5 Big game ladder stands purchased from Rural King. I also relocated 2 of them solo 10+- miles from the original mounting site as a Sr. hunter in his late 70's.

I did have one issue with one of the stand boxes as it had a rip and Big Game agreed to replace it and rather than returning the stand missing hardware I negated a credit to keep the stand and supplying my own hardware.

I worked with the customer service team for months to get the replacement stand...The company sold as I wrote the CEO complaining about the lies, no return calls etc. Upon the CEO reading my letter I received the new replacement ladder within a week.

So as for the assembly: I did the assembly of the seat/platform at home, sorted out all the hardware in plastic bags and labeled each one for the installation steps.....All went well....learned a few few tricks with each installation. I find the stands very comfortable and easy to shoot my crossbow from. I remove the seats from the stands for Winter, or after taking my buck for dry storage and to keep them away from chewing varmints and in case someone else chooses to to use the stands they will have to stand.....

 

My biggest gripe about ladder stands these days are the stupid sling seats on 2-man ladder stands. They have that middle bar and I like to sit in the middle and it sticks up your arse and is really uncomfortable. I prefer the older solid metal seats with the added pad. I wish they would make them again. I can`t find them anymore.

 

That what this one has. I’m gonna cut a piece of 3/4 “ CDX and make a bench seat.

 

The 2 Sportsman guide stands had the stupidest seat configuration. Normal 1” square tube frame but also had a bar in the middle of seat. But no expanded metal over it. The padding was a thin soft 1” thick foam. You basicly sat on the front and middle bar. Talk about painful. I also used cdx and twist tied #12 copper wire to the frame to make it easy to remove. This was maybe 15 yrs ago. Hopefully they improved a lot but I’m not ever buying stands from them again