How it Started

    Bill Toonen has been an avid archery hunter all of his life and also enjoys the sport of rock climbing. In 1998 he sustained a broken and dislocated hip while hunting alone on his 400 acre tract in Buffalo Co. Wisconsin. Lying on the ground, paralyzed, helpless and with no one knowing where he was, he reached into a side pocket for his cell phone.  He hoped he would get a signal in those hills. It had been raining. No vehicle would get up these dug roads. 911, “Hello, Buffalo Co Sheriff” Three hours later a Mayo Clinic helicopter touched down in a clearing above while being directed in by that cell phone. Buffalo Co Rescue made it up at the same time with four wheelers. That phone literally saved his life. The next year a local Milwaukee TV station did a news piece on the accident basically lobbying for the cell phone companies to initiate GPS location capability.
    From that day forward he became obsessed with the concept of safety in the woods while hunting. Much of that effort went into developing tree stand safety techniques.  Bill was already now in his 50s. He knew how to protect himself while in the stand, but it was the concept of safety on the way up and on the way down that compelled him to keep looking for the answer. After all, most of the accidents happened on the way up and down.  Why did he sometimes find himself leaving his tree stand when the best few minutes of hunting were still left? Was it because he was nervous about the trip down the tree in very little light? From his rock climbing experience he knew it had to revolve around some kind of rope in the tree. A Life Line so to speak. It should at least be of the same quality used by rock climbers.  But tree stand hunting is a solo sport. There is no one to be on belay. The rope would have to be tied to the tree above the tree stand.  There would have to be a way to connect the hunter to the rope and still let him move up and down. And of course there would have to be a lock up or fall arrest function if there was an accidental fall. 
In the early days he used the best climbing ropes he could buy and tied sections to his favorite tree stands for the hunting season. An arborist prussic knot was on each rope and that was attached to the back lanyard of the harness when reaching the tree. It was a big improvement over nothing but had its’ draw backs.

1)  The knot had to be manually moved by hand, taking away one of the climbers points of contact  multiple times during the accent and decent.

2)  In addition, there were numerous studies and articles about the danger of “Panic Grab” on the knot in the event of a fall, thereby disabling the arrest function of the knot.  See www.camp4.com/rock/index.php?newsid=207#

3)  It also bothered him that in the event of a fall the hunter would be spun around by the back lanyard attachment. Then he would find himself hanging and facing away from the tree that he should be facing to initiate self rescue.

    Perhaps there could an attachment to the chest. After all, wasn’t that common in some ANSI rated harnesses used in industry and rescue? 
The wheels of change were starting to turn. Bill found a self trailing, fall arresting devise. It was made by a large European firm, well known to the rock climbing industry. It freely traveled up and down the rope with the hunter. He tested it with 275lb drop tests with great success. He now didn’t have to take his hand off a tree step to move it. He used that for a number of years. However that devise was also subject to a “Panic Grab”. It was alright as a personal system, but not yet anything he would market to the public.