Sharing a tree stand ==

Doc, It says 404 NOT FOUND

Works for me

It's working now.

I want that to happen to me. Man, what a rush!!!

He's been up this one before.  Note the muddy rungs.  They were clean the last time I left this stand.

I dare him to come back at 7:00 AM on 11/19!

Good luck Claypool ....

Jeeze.  Way to take some pics.  To be honest I had my camera in pocket, but too nervous to take my release hand off the loop long enough to take any pictures.  In hindsight I wish I would have.

Believe me .. I was not sure what to do,

Should I yell at it to make it go away..

wouldn't that draw even more attention to me up in that tree ??

what if it got more curious ??

Should I take something from my fanny pack and toss at it ??

What about a hard snort from the grunt call ??

I finally decided to do NOTHING but take video of it..

As mentioned there was no way I wanted that rascal leaning or pushing on the tree I was in..

As it end up - after about 5-6 minutes of walking around and looking up at me it got bored and just walked off making me one happy hunter

BTW.. I was totally amazed at how close it got to my location, even with dry fall leaves on the ground, without making much noise. A squirrel running around earlier made more noise than that bear did !!!

+1 Thunder That guy has better nerves than I do! My video would have had a lot more shakes included.

At first I think I was in a trance...  here's the story..

It was about 2:30 in the afternoon, I had returned to the same area I hunted that morning I saw where several nice bucks traveled on that morning hunt (out of range for my compound bow) .. so I decided to use the climber and get closer to that trail for the late afternoon hunt... there were only much small trees near that crossing so I decided to climb a much smaller tree than I normal choose to get in ... and hope for the best.

I got all situated in the stand and had just poured a cup of coffee and was settling in when I hear a slight rustling of leaves behind me... my first thoughts were the black squirrel I had seen running there that morning, so I put the coffee mug  down, grabbed the camcorder and slowly turned to look at the squirrel, much to my surprise it was a black bear.  I would never have believed a bear could walk thru fallen dry fall leaves that quietly...

It was the very first time I had seen a bear "in the wild"... I think for the first few minutes I just stared and took video... as it got closer and started looking up at me , that's when I start worrying about my well-being if the bear shook the tree...

I did finally start yelling at it but it appeared to pay me no attention and walked off at it's own pace...

never ever thought about running into a bear at that time of the afternoon

Don't think "guts" had a thing to do with it... I was simply amazed/enjoying  the encounter..