 Hello, I'm Ron Ducar with Pyramid Air. Today we're going to talk about getting into saddle hunting. What do you need and the basics of that as well as stick around and I'm going to show you how to one stick climb? What you need to begin with is you have to have, we're talking have to have, have to have a saddle of some sort. This is the phantom saddle from Tethered. You will also need to have some way to ascend the tree or climb it, climb up it. Tethered sticks, this is the Skeletor stick that they have comes in a four pack. Traditionally, you're going to probably use four sticks out of the gate. I'm going to show you the more advanced method in a moment, which is one stick climbing. You're also going to need some type of an ascender. I recommend the rope man, which you will find as well from Tethered. You know, they they have everything for a specific reason. This is very lightweight, very compact. You'll see how to use it in a second. You're also going to need a lineman's rope and carabiner. It already has a prusik knot, which is a knot tied into the rope that you're going to be attaching the saddle to the prusik knot with the carabiner. And then the rope goes around the tree. Two elements for comfort that I highly recommend that you do. I've hunted without these and I regretted it almost immediately. The first one is having some type of knee protection. You're going to have your knees on that tree. There's going to be a time that you're going to want to rest and having some type of this is an external knee pad system from Tethered that goes on the outside of your hunting gear. So you don't modify fit or anything. You actually just adjust these on the outside. They also sell something called the Nushin, which is a pad that wraps around the tree once you get up there. Also for comfort, if you're going to be sitting up there, a much overlooked item that I would never go hunting. Saddle hunting without is the back strap. This thing goes around your back like so and attaches to the tree. And when you're sitting up there, it turns your saddle almost into like a hammock and it is really makes your set comfortable. All this equipment is available on pyramidair.com. Let's take it out and see how you use it. So to put on the phantom saddle, you want to first locate each of your waist clips. And you're going to want to step through your bridge, which is this rope and the saddle itself. Typically do that by laying it on the ground and stepping into the saddle. Once it's up, you're going to clip and adjust your waist waist belt. You want that to be snug. And then in between your legs, you're going to see the straps which come to corresponding hook straps on the saddle. This secures your legs to the saddle. You should have your bridge, which is an adjustable bridge on this saddle. You're going to see what that means is there's a pristic knot right here that you can loosen a little bit and you can adjust the length of how much distance there is in the rope between each of these points or extend it out if you need to. Also unique to these saddles is there's a little grooves that enable you to get a custom fit. Once you're up in the tree, you can just simply slide the rope up or down into the groove and it'll change the angle when you're in the tree. The Skeletor Stick is going to come in a package of four. We're just going to use one today and use a little bit more complex way of climbing, which is called the one-stick method. The next step after having your saddle on is going to be loosen your rope on your stick. Once that's loose, you're going to put the stick up against the side of the tree and move the rope around the tree. Tethered has a patented way. You're going to see right here on how to wrap this, go around, and then you make an X. Unique to one-stick climbing, what you're going to notice on the bottom of this stick is I've attached a two-step adder. There's one-step adders, two-step adders, three-step adders. I tend to find two works best for me with one-stick climbing. You want to get the rope out of your way and you want to pull down on the stick to make sure it's seated properly against the tree. If you don't do that, this could slide back and forth when you climb, so for safety reasons, always make sure you pull down. I'm going to use my rope for this. What you're going to see with one-stick climbers is you're going to want a little bit longer of a tether for the tree. In order to attach that, you have a carabiner on one end and you're just simply going to put it around the tree. Once you get to this point, you clip back onto the rope and cinch it tight. The ascender actually opens up and will go on your rope. You'll see that this bends back and the teeth go down. That enables you to fit first your rope inside, close it up, and then you want to pull this all the way to open up enough space in here to fit your carabiner. That will now slide up and hold tight for while you make your climb. The next step to secure it all in and to secure myself to the tree for the climb, I'm going to attach my bridge rope from my saddle to my carabiner, my ascender, and my linemen's rope. So now that everything's attached to the tree, the first step is to take your first step. You'll feel the stick tighten with your body weight, which is securing it to the tree, and that is perfectly fine. You might feel it adjust a little bit. Again, that's just for safety. It's making sure everything is secure as you're making your climb. Take your next step. Typically, when I reach the bottom step, I then move my linemen's rope up the tree. Now onto the fun part of one stick climbing. What you do instead of just attaching another stick here and climbing up and then attaching another stick and climbing up, is I'm actually going to drop down a little bit and let the rope hold my weight. At that point, I detach the skeletor and move it up the tree, and here you can see why it's so critical to have knee pads. Again, I'm pulling it tight, tying it off, doing the same thing on the bottom and just I'm going to keep doing that all the way up iteration after iteration. Now you'll see I'm going to put my weight back onto the stick with this aider and move up the tree. Moving my linemen's rope up, same as it was before, and just keep going. Let's say that I've reached hunting height and I want to get, I'm already at the top of where I want to be. I would then either be on this top step or right here, and I'll kind of show you the joy of saddle hunting, is that once you have everything set up in your exact position and your bridge height and everything ready to go, which means this is comfortable for you. You have these in the right knots that feel comfortable to you, your uniqueness. What you want to do is, if I have a bow, I can now come almost 360 degrees around the tree when I'm hunting. And I'll go even behind the tree, if need be, to go any direction to get a deer. One way to add comfort and another thing, just like the knee cushions I told you about, you also want the back strap. This goes over top of your person. You can adjust it anywhere on your back that you want. And I recommend you clip it right in here to the same carabiner that has your pivot point. And you can adjust this back and forth, and now it's like you're laying in a hammock. So now, step by step, I'm going to do that in reverse with a couple of adjustments. The first is, take the back strap off. You can slide out of the back strap, unhook it from your carabiner, fold it up, goes in your pocket pouch wherever I hunt entirely out of pockets. Now to come down easily, I have another piece unique that I would recommend getting if you are going to be repelling down, which is just simply a piece of paracord with a carabiner attached to it. And what you want to do is release your string all the way to the ground and then up here on the tree, you're going to see I'm going to clip it into the rope that's attached to the tree. Now that I have my line clipped in to the lineman's knot on side of the tree, I'm going to now use a figure of eight. This is a piece of repelling gear that is, again, going to be unique for one-stick climbing. You need a carabiner for it and the figure of eight. How you do that is you take a bite of rope, which in repelling is just considered like a loop in a rope that's already taught. And then you're going to put it through the big part and wrap it around the small part. I'll do that one more time. Take your bite of rope, put it through the big loop, wrap it around the neck of the small. Then what I do is the bottom loose end going to the ground, I'm going to wrap around three times. That's just to make sure that there's no way I can fall out of this when I transition onto this figure of eight. I'm going to take another carabiner and I'm going to clip my bridge onto my figure of eight. That keeps me safe and secure. Now I'm going to release myself from this bridge, from this rope, and lean back on. Now all the weight and tension is on this figure of eight. I'm now going to remove this or slide it down. I'm going to go two wraps off so I have the loop and one wrap. And now I can just slowly let myself down. As I come down, it's common to swing. Don't worry about that. You can bring your ascender down with you if you want or you can leave it up there entirely up to you. And right about this point, I'm going to detach my Skeletor Stick. You can either drop this straight to the ground or you can just bring it down with you like so. Don't worry about swinging. Detaching the figure of eight, you take that wrap back off, take the bite back out of the rope and off of the eight. I am now free from the tree. Now I need to remove my ascender. In order to do that, I need to back off first my carabiner and remove that. Open up the ascender and stow away. If you notice the position where I clipped in the carabiner on the lineman's rope, what that enables me to do is to give a simple tug to open up the loop, give it a couple little shakes, and down comes my rope. If you have a branch, navigate around the branch, you're back down, and now all you have to do is tie up your ropes, put them back in your pocket and you're ready to go. I know this seems pretty clunky at first and slow, but once you get the hang of it and do the steps quickly, you'll see how fast and smooth you can be. Saddle hunting is the new way to hunt out of a tree. It's also very comfortable and there's a lot of different options that you can use out there. This is the way that I prefer to go with one stick because I can get up there, I have limited profile, you can do four sticks, you can even do a platform at the top if you'd like. I'm Ron Duke with Pyramid Air. Please remember to like, comment, and subscribe, and I'll see you next time.