Lock-on deer stands have area flavor ; Andy Stands were perfected, produced by Jacksonville firefighter

This might be hard to believe, but World War II Japanese snipers likely invented the first modern, fixed-position, portable hunting tree stand. It's a design still used today by millions of deer hunters, including thousands of Florida and Georgia archers who started their monthlong bow seasons this weekend.

The WWII sniper tree stand design was copied and perfected by Jacksonville fireman Andy Anders, who commercially produced, here in the River City, the first fixed-position, lock-on type tree stands ever made.

It's an amazing hunting story, that begins in 1947, when Anders was standing precariously in a giant live oak tree on Blackbeard Island in Georgia. It was the first public bowhunt for whitetail deer on that now famous federally owned barrier island, surrounded by saltwater just north of the town of Brunswick.

Anders was one of only nine bowhunters participating, and he and his friends knew that, like Native Americans, to effectively collect deer using recurve and long bows and cedar-shaft arrows, they had to get in the tree tops to hide and ambush wary whitetails.

Anders found the going tough in the timber. Rough bark and uncomfortable, irregularly shaped and shaky limbs made climbing in, and hunting from, the oaks less than fun dangerous, too.

"There had to be a better method than doing it like the Indians," he thought after the hunt. "There must be a way to construct a portable platform, a stand, in the timber to more effectively bowhunt deer."

Thus began the Andy Stand, which was the first commercially made platform designed specifically for deer hunting from trees. Yet Anders is quick to point out he didn't devise the original concept of the fixed-position tree stand he made of tubular metal and plywood.

"I was in the Pacific Theater in World War II, and my job was a counter-sniper rifleman," Anders told me on a bowhunt to Blackbeard Island in 1977, while dozens of archers were using his homemade stands to bowhunt deer. "I remembered that Japanese snipers used small platforms to sit on in the treetops, and they were made from native plants, mostly bamboo. They had a half-round frame rim, just big enough to sit on, made from tough bamboo strips. They wove a tight, durable base on the rim from vines and smaller bamboo strips. The frame was lashed to a tree with a vine strap, and the stand was supported by a rugged Y-shaped bamboo post. The top part of the Y attached to the stand base at its mid-point sides. The bottom of the Y was heavy bamboo, cut at a sharp angle at the tip so it could be jammed into tree bark, which supported the base while sitting on it."

The original Andy Stand was that exact-same design, except the frame and Y were made of tubular metal, the stand base made from 3/ 8-inch plywood - not bamboo. Instead of a vine to wrap around the tree, Anders used a heavy chain bolted to one side of the tubular metal frame that went around the trunk, then fitted to a heavy metal hook welded in the opposite side of the frame.

"Other than that, the stand was the same as snipers used in Pacific jungles during the 1940s," said Anders.

"The Andy Stand was the first commercially made tree stand I ever saw, which was about 1970," says longtime bowhunter and retired firefighter Mike Mooney of Mandarin, who for 14 years owned Jacksonville's Fort Caroline Archery Shop. "I still have some of the stands, and for some hunting it remains my favorite. It's a two- piece stand, a base and a seat, both identical in design, though the base is twice as large as the seat. In hunting from a tree location where limbs fork, or there are two trunks close together, an Andy Stand is unbeatable for comfort. Further, when it's attached properly, it is the most secure stand I've used - never wiggling and completely silent."

Mooney sold countless Andy Stands through his archery shop.

Most of the area's best and most successful bowhunters were die- hard Andy Stand users and helped spread the word far and wide about the innovative and very portable deer hunting stand.

"Great North Florida bowhunters used them religiously. Back then people like Don Smith, Danny Moran, Gary Locke, Jim Jones, Johnny Bragg, Bruce Hartley and Larry Miniard wouldn't think of hunting out of any other type stand," says Mooney. "One of the best bowhunters I've ever known is Marvin Hankemeyer of Pomona Park, and he still uses an original Andy Stand because it's lightweight, extremely portable, and when it's set up correctly, is perhaps the best bowhunting platform an archer can use."

Sadly, the original Andy Stand is no longer made commercially. Anders quit making the stands when liability issues and high insurance rates forced its demise.

But it's a bit of Jacksonville bowhunting lore worth [email protected]