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Solutions Hunting
Arm a check-in before you climb. Miss it, and the people already in the same woods are alerted with your last known position — on cellular, or over an inReach where there is none.
You leave before dawn and nobody expects you until after dark. If something goes wrong at nine in the morning, the first person to wonder about it does so at supper. That stretch is the problem, and it is the part a check-in takes away.
Fayssoux RS et al., “Spinal injuries after falls from hunting tree stands,” The Spine Journal 8(3), 2008 — 22 patients at one spinal injury referral centre, 1995 to 2005.
None of these is rare, and in every one of them the thing that decides how it ends is how long it takes somebody to come.
Awake, thinking clearly, and unable to walk out or reach the phone in the pack thirty feet away. Everything that can still be decided is decided by the clock.
A turned ankle or a bad knee is a nuisance at noon and a different thing at thirty-five degrees, wet, after dark. Cold turns an injury you would walk off into one you cannot.
Hours of sitting still, then a hard drag over rough ground in the cold. When you sit down and know something is wrong, not clearing your check-in brings your people to you without a call you may not be able to make.
The area to search grows with every hour you are unaccounted for. “He left before dawn and was going to hunt the back forty” is a big search. A last known position and a time is a small one.
Pick when you expect to be back on the ground, say where you are headed, and arm it. One tap clears it. Staying for the last light? Extend it. Arm one for the sit and another for the climb down, which is when most falls happen.
A missed check-in alerts your roster, and your roster is whoever you choose. Put the people in the next blind at the top: they are already in the same woods, with a side-by-side, and they will reach your stand before anyone coming from town. If nobody acknowledges, AlertRoster escalates to the next person — your household, your neighbour, whoever you listed — and pages again each time an acknowledgement window runs out.
With location on for the check-in, the people coming for you see your last known position and your trail on a map, with the time of each point, and it keeps updating until the incident is closed. It is also exactly what a county sheriff wants handed to them if it comes to that.
Most good deer ground has poor coverage, and your deadline runs either way: if you cannot reach the app to clear it, the miss is raised exactly as though you forgot. Pair a Garmin inReach and AlertRoster reaches your people over satellite: someone with no signal is paged on the inReach and acknowledges from it. With automatic SOS turned on, a missed check-in while your phone has no signal declares an SOS on your inReach, and Garmin Response receives it under your Garmin plan.
The SOS button on an inReach reaches Garmin Response, who coordinate with public agencies. That is the right call when you can press it. AlertRoster covers the case where you cannot, and it starts with the people who are closest: the ones you came out with. The two work together, and AlertRoster uses the inReach you already own to do it.
Billed monthly or annually.
For one person working, walking or driving alone.
$12 / month
Watchers: Unlimited, free
For a household looking out for each other.
$19 / month
Watchers: No watcher-only seats
Pick a plan, add the people who should hear about it, and arm your first check-in.