There is a big difference between reviewing a treestand after a few hunts and reviewing one after it has spent five years strapped to a tree. For the past five seasons, I’ve hunted from a Millennium 2-person ladder stand on my property, and I haven’t exactly babied it. The stand has never come out of the woods. It has been exposed to rain, heat, humidity, falling leaves, squirrels, tree growth, and even a large fallen limb. Aside from replacing aging straps and making a few basic annual adjustments, I’ve done essentially nothing to protect it, and five seasons later, I’m still hunting out of it.
That experience has changed the way I look at ladder stands in general. I originally bought a two-person stand because I wanted room to hunt with other people, but after living with one for several seasons, I’ve come to appreciate the extra space just as much when I’m hunting alone.
Why I Wanted a 2-Person Ladder Stand
My original motivation was pretty simple: hunting is more fun when you can share it with somebody. I hunt with my wife, I’ve started taking my young sons hunting, and I regularly take friends who are relatively new to hunting. Some of those new hunters are kids, but plenty are adults who simply didn’t grow up hunting.
A 2-person ladder stand lets me sit beside somebody instead of putting them in a stand alone and hoping they figure everything out. I can quietly talk a new hunter through what is happening, help them identify when an animal is approaching, and guide them through taking their first shot.
A roomy ladder stand is also hard to beat when it comes to convenience and safety. With my kids, this is especially important for both them and me. There is something about climbing into a ladder stand that they genuinely enjoy. We use safety harnesses and lifelines, and getting geared up and climbing into the stand has become part of the hunting experience for them. My oldest son prefers it to sitting inside a blind because he can see everything happening around him; he feels like he is outside and involved in the hunt instead of looking through a window, which helps keep him engaged. I find if we sit in a blind, he’s asking for a screen, if we sit in a ladder, he’s asking for binoculars.
But the unexpected benefit has been how much I like the two-person stand when nobody else is sitting beside me. I can put my pack on the seat, keep a thermos beside me, and have somewhere to put gear without constantly hanging things from hooks or worrying about something falling to the ground. For the type of places where I use ladder stands, that extra room has become more valuable to me than saving a little size or weight with a single-person model. At this point, I’d have a hard time buying another single ladder stand. For the way I hunt, it is pretty much double ladder stands or nothing.
Why I Didn’t Go With a Cheaper Stand
I’ve owned cheaper 2-person ladder stands before, including the type you commonly find at big-box stores. My experience with them is that getting the price down usually comes with compromises somewhere. Sometimes it’s comfort, sometimes components start deteriorating after a few seasons, and sometimes it is simply the feeling you get looking at a stand that is supposed to support two grown adults 15 or 20 feet off the ground and wondering how much longer you trust it. That matters to me.
I had already used other Millennium products before buying this stand, and one of the biggest reasons I stayed with the brand was the seat. Millennium’s seats have always been exceptionally comfortable to me. That may sound like a luxury until you spend enough time hunting from an uncomfortable stand.
I believe comfort directly affects hunting success. If you are uncomfortable, you squirm, shift your weight, stand up and sit down, and eventually start thinking about getting out of the stand. When you are comfortable, you sit still and stay longer. In plenty of hunting situations, simply being willing to stay another hour can be the difference between seeing an animal and walking back to the truck. “Ass in seat” time equals more sightings and harvests; it’s as simple as that.
Five Years Outside With Almost No Maintenance
The part of this review that probably says the most about the stand is how poorly I have treated it. I have never taken it down for offseason storage; it has remained attached to the same tree for all five years.
The biggest modification I made when installing it was replacing the ratchet strap attachment with a chain and turnbuckle. Because I knew the stand was going to remain there long term, I wanted a way to account for the tree growing. Each year, I can loosen and readjust the turnbuckle rather than allowing the tree to grow and stress the strap. I also don’t have to worry about a ratchet strap dry-rotting and failing unexpectedly.
Beyond that, my annual maintenance routine is pretty simple. I inspect the stand, inspect the other straps, replace straps when they begin showing age, and re-tension the tree brace so the ladder remains tight against the tree and quiet. Keeping that brace properly tensioned is important. A ladder stand that can shift when you climb it is not only less confidence-inspiring, it is noisier. Retensioning everything keeps the ladder solid and quiet.
The 2-person ladder stand itself has required essentially no repair. After five years, the metal is still in good condition, and I’m not seeing visible corrosion or rust that concerns me. The seat has also held up surprisingly well.The stand is located in bottomland hardwoods beneath a closed canopy, which has undoubtedly reduced some direct UV exposure. But it is hardly protected from the outdoors. Every year I climb up and find leaves, pieces of decaying organic material, and debris from squirrels sitting in the stand eating acorns. I wipe it clean and keep hunting, as the fabric seats still show no obvious signs of deterioration.
The One Part That Could Be Better
There has been one component that hasn’t survived five years outside completely intact: the tension knobs on the adjustable gun rest have become brittle over time, I suppose from UV exposure. The plastic developed the gray, starburst-looking appearance you sometimes see as plastic ages outdoors. Eventually, I simply removed the knobs, and now I use a wrench to loosen and tighten the tension bolts when I need to adjust the gun rest.
In practical terms, it has barely mattered. Once I have the shooting rail positioned where I want it, I don’t have a reason to adjust it from one hunt to the next, making that the only meaningful component failure I’ve had in five seasons.
The stand has even survived a falling limb. A limb came down directly onto the seat and gun rest this year with enough force to push the adjustable rail downward in its brackets. I loosened the tension bolts, moved the rail back into position, tightened everything again, and the stand went right back into service. Five years after we put it up, it functions essentially the same way it did when it was new.
Is It Really Big Enough for Two Adults?
Some “two-person” stands are really one-adult-and-one-kid stands, but this isn’t one of them. I’m 6-foot-5 and around 230 pounds, while my brother is about 6 feet and 200 pounds, and we have hunted together from this stand. I’ve hunted from it with my wife as well, and there is enough room for two full-grown adults to actually hunt comfortably.
Obviously, hunters still need to pay attention to the manufacturer’s rated capacity, particularly once you start adding rifles, packs, heavy clothing, boots, and other equipment. Two large adults can accumulate a surprising amount of total weight once all their gear is included. But from a space and comfort standpoint, I consider this a legitimate two-adult stand rather than something that technically has two seats but becomes miserable when two grown men actually climb into it.
Comfort and Quiet Matter More Over Time
One of the benefits of having a stand in the same location for five seasons is that you stop thinking about specifications and start noticing the things that actually affect how often you hunt it. For me, the two biggest factors have been comfort and noise.
This is a spot we hunt regularly because the stand makes it easy to do so. It is comfortable enough that sitting for a long time isn’t a chore, and once everything is properly tensioned, it is quiet getting into and out of the tree. That combination matters. When you find a location you know you are going to hunt year after year, investing in a comfortable stand starts making more sense. You aren’t buying it for three sits; you may spend dozens or eventually hundreds of hours there. That has certainly been the case with this one.
I’ve also added a little camouflage netting around the gun rest. It isn’t meant to turn an open ladder stand into a blind, but it provides enough visual breakup to hide some movement. That has been especially useful when hunting with young kids. A five-, six-, or seven-year-old isn’t going to sit as motionless as an experienced adult hunter, so having a little material between them and an approaching deer gives them some room to move without every motion being immediately visible.
What I Would Change
There isn’t much I would change about the stand itself, but the one feature I would like to see incorporated into future Millennium ladder stands is a better system for securing the stand to the tree before someone makes that initial climb. That first climb has always been the part of installing a traditional ladder stand that makes me the most uncomfortable. I’ve fallen from a tree before, so I take that part seriously.
These days, when I install a conventional ladder stand, I prefer to use climbing sticks and a lineman’s belt to ascend the tree while another person stays on the ground. We can then pull and secure the stand into position without requiring someone to make an unsecured first climb.
Millennium’s sister brand, Ol’ Man, uses what it calls a Jaw and Truss system on some ladder stands, and I would like to see a similar concept incorporated into the Millennium design. Being able to securely clamp the stand to the tree before that first ascent would make an already good stand considerably better from an installation standpoint. Once this stand is installed, though, I have very few complaints.
Would I Buy It Again?
After five seasons, yes. More than that, this stand has changed what I would buy going forward. I originally saw a 2-person ladder stand primarily as something for hunting with another person, but now I see the extra space as worthwhile even for solo hunting. For permanent or semi-permanent locations where extreme concealment isn’t the main consideration, I would rather have the additional room.
I don’t know exactly how many more seasons this particular stand will last, but at the moment, I don’t see an obvious failure point. The metal looks good, the seat looks good, and the components that naturally age outdoors, particularly straps, are easily inspected and replaced. As long as I continue accounting for tree growth, re-tensioning the stand, replacing straps when necessary, and inspecting everything before hunting from it, I expect to get another five seasons. For a treestand that has spent its entire life outside with virtually no special treatment, that may be the strongest endorsement I can give it.
