Boekeloo Invents Elevated Hunting Tree Stand

Image courtesy of the News Tribune
“It’s all about safety. There are too many people falling out of trees and tree stands each year,” said Jimmy Boekeloo, of Hennepin. Boekeloo was tired of hearing about people getting injured when deer hunting, so he came up with an idea to make the sport he loves a little safer.

“Putting them up and taking them down is really the main time that people fall. Just getting it up and getting it secure is really what I was trying to make safe,” said Boekeloo.

Boekeloo invented LockJawz, a patent-pending elevated hunting tree stand. The stand, which uses a gripping mechanism to secure to a tree, has a pulley to raise the stand and put it in place.

“It’s going to be the only one you’ll be able to pull out of the box, assemble in five minutes, and put in the tree,” said Boekeloo. “There is a wheel assembly option on it as well, so if you decide to buy the wheel assembly, it turns into a game cart.”

He has been working on the prototype for about five years now, and said he had many failures before settling on the design he patented.

Boekeloo said his next step was to ask for help.

“The next step was realizing I wasn’t smart enough to do it myself. I’m smart enough to know I’m not smart enough to do this on my own.” He took his idea to Mennie’s Machine, which has been helping him with prototypes and engineering.

“They have been very instrumental. They basically gave me their whole machine shop, gave me their engineer, and said, ‘develop away’,” he said. “I went to him with bar napkins and graph paper. He put that on the computer and figures out clearances, sizes, if everything is going to swing right. All that stuff can be done on a computer instead of in a garage for the next ten years.”

Boekeloo currently is producing prototypes and going to hunting and gun shows to try and get his name out. “We are probably going to start with online sales, unless we can get in to retail stores,” Boekeloo said.

He is trying to find somewhere to mass assemble the stand, while keeping the costs low. “We’re going to try and keep it affordable for the general public. I did an average cost of 34 different tree stands — the average was about $177. Because ours is a specialty item with the locking safety system, it will probably be $250,” said Boekeloo.

While there are plenty of other elevated stands on the market, even some with locking mechanisms, Boekeloo said, “We’re not going to do anything other than the safest stand on the market.”

Source: News Tribune