When a hunter is in a tree stand with moral values and with the proper hunting ethics and richer for the experience, that hunter is 20 feet closer to God. –Fred Bear
Heaven's Trail® founder and Chief Hunting Officer Chris Berry came into the tree stand business with big ideas about how to maximize tree stand safety and comfort. Through hard work and innovation, Heaven's Trail® has engineered an entirely new category of stand. But like every great creation story, a little divine inspiration also played a role, one best summed up in the backstory behind how Berry chose the company name.
In his writings, Fred Bear often touched on the spiritual aspects of bowhunting. But Berry didn't have Bear's words in mind any more than he was inspired by the 2011 viral internet photo dubbed Heaven's Trail, which can still be seen circulating around the internet every couple years.
"I wanted people to know we're a Christian company, but we're not about throwing Bible verses around or stamping them on the products we make," says Berry. "We would rather lead by example."
Berry says the Heaven's Trail® name came to him after he started taking his children hunting for deer. To pass the time until the action started, he often quietly read the Bible on his iPhone. His three sons were soon doing the same.
"For some people, their happy place is a golf course or a tennis court. For us, it was a tree stand. We did more Bible study up in a tree than we ever did in church or Sunday school," Berry says. "And it was being out in nature—where every time you move your eyeballs there was another example of the work of our Creator—that inspired the name Heaven's Trail®."
The Hang Around® line from Heaven's Trail® delivers the industry's safest, most comfortable and most secure tree stand. It's built around the belief that a hunter who feels safe and comfortable will stay on stand longer.
"And, as every hunter knows, the longer you can stay on stand, the more it increases your chances of seeing the buck you're after. It increases the time spent alone just taking in nature or shared with your loved ones by your side—whatever your motive or measure is of hunting success," says Berry. "In other words, if you can hang around longer, then we've made good on our promise. And we've definitely done our job."