Group working to raise tree stand safety awareness
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) – Saturday thousands of hunters will be out in their orange for the start of firearm deer hunting season.
Now one group is trying to bring awareness about tree stand safety. The Tree Stand Safety Awareness Foundation wants one message to get to hunters this year: use tree stands safely so that everyone comes home safe.
Sean Ferbrache the chief operating officer for the American Hunting Lease Association says the stories hunters aren’t telling is what they should be discussing.
“Moms or wives will always look at their husbands and say you’re wearing one, right? It just takes once, one fall on a slippery frosty cold morning and your life is changed forever,” said Ferbrache.
Ned Yost, manager of the Kansas City Royals, fell out of a tree stand last week and broke his pelvis. A woman in Missouri fell over the weekend too.
“The vast majority of tree stand falls occur when I’m transitioning from my ladder or sticks onto the tree stand,” said Ferbrache.
The Tree Stand Safety Awareness Foundation made up of industry competitors is a non-competitive foundation to save lives of people who enjoy the outdoor lifestyle.
“We want fathers, brothers, sisters and daughters to go home at the end of a hunt and enjoy their hunt,” said Ferbrache. “Too many families are negatively impacted when they fall out of a tree stand. It’s not about you, it’s about your family at home. It’s about your wife who needs you at home. It’s about your kids growing up, it’s about you passing on the heritage and tradition of hunting and the outdoor lifestyle to a family that you can’t do that if your dead or in a wheelchair or anything like that.”
Ferbrache says falls from tree stands are difficult to track because it relies on hunters and hospitals reporting the accident. Unofficially, Indiana has had 12 reported falls this year already.