I will try to be as objective as possible with this review. It will be hard to do so. I absolutely love my Summit Viper. I have used a Viper for years and the stand is like an old friend. The stand and I have shared so many memories of so many bucks. I would give up a lot of my hunting equipment before I would ever give up my Viper. So I am on record now as being a little prejudice regarding this stand.
1. Set Up
Set up is accomplished by placing a shrink tube covered steel cable with large outside diameter stop points through a slot in the stand. Tension on the cable is determined by the stop point you select. It is a very simple design and the lack of any pins or superfluous other parts to accomplish the lock up to the tree is one of the stands best features. I would rate it equally with the lock up on the Equalizer were it not for the noise issue. Even though the cables are encased in a rubber like shrink tube material, they can and do on occasion make noise as you place the stand on the tree. Oh, and be prepared to renew the heat shrink material covering the cable on an annual basis if you use the stand regularly during the season. It is not a big deal, but it is required maintenance if you want to keep the noise to a minimum every year. This being said, it is still a great design and it rates a nine out of a possible ten points and is second only to swift lock terminals used on some stands and the belt and camber systems used by others like the Lone Wolf.
2. Climbability
Climbing with the Viper is effortless. The sit down stand up movements are very simple with little force needed by the legs to pull up the bottom portion. I just put my feet under the side tubes of the foot portion to raise it as I go up the tree. I did try the new foot “stirrups” they came out with a few years ago (the green plastic three quarter horseshoe design) and found that I didn’t need them and that they got in my way more then helped me. The front bar of the seat portion is heavily padded and you appreciate this fact as you sit on that bar while climbing. In all the years of using my Viper I have never had the cables slip against the bark of the tree. You climber users know that feeling, the cable slips about an inch or so before it holds onto the tree and you get that “pants are ready for the biz bag feeling.” Once you are up the tree Summit wants you to take a strap and secure it around the seat portion and the tree to prevent slippage when you stand up and take your weight off of the seat. This feature is ancient technology and many other manufacturers have moved way past this method with better mousetraps. Were it not for this small flaw I would give this stand a ten for climbability. As it is, it receives a nine.
3. Comfort
Some of you Viper owners may have noticed the seat portion of my stand is the long gone blow up seat. Both the seat and the back have separate blow up valves and you can inflate them to your specific comfort level. I LOVE THIS FEATURE! I don’t know why Summit ever moved away from this design but I suspect it was due to cost. The seats that now come with the Viper are your run of the mill sling seats albeit very well made ones. And I am sure they are very comfortable, but not as comfortable as my old blow up seat. If this seat every wears out it will indeed be a sad day. But overall, the Viper is a true all day climber regardless of the seat vintage. It is incredibly comfortable and if I am in for a long hunt, the Viper is my choice of all my climbers. The design allows for easy transition from the sitting position to the standing position with little effort. Some sling seats envelope you to a degree that it is hard to get out of them and into a standing position without going through some major body gyrations that could alert inquisitive eyes. Not so with the Viper. The Viper scores a perfect ten for me in the comfort department.
4. Safety
I always feel safe in my Viper. But Summit needs to make one improvement and it is indeed a very simple one. They should incorporate the dual straps utilized by the Equalizer and other stands that lock the seat portion to the foot portion. In my opinion this is the best way to insure the seat portion of any climber never slips when you stand up and take your weight off of it. The downward force of your weight on the foot section makes any seat portion seemed nailed to the tree. As mentioned above, the Viper just uses a strap around the seat section to secure it to the tree once you arrive at your desired hunting height. It is for this reason that I downgrade the viper one point and give it a rating of nine.
5. Packability
The stand nests pretty well. The weight you will be throwing on your back is twenty pounds and the Viper is right there in weight with most of the competition. But it is my opinion that these twenty pounds are a heavy twenty pounds. It is heavy because it just never reaches that sweet spot on your back where the weight is distributed properly to reduce the fatigue while packing the stand into your hunting area. I have tried many things to overcome this obstacle with my Viper. I have never succeeded. If I have a long way to go, the viper stays in the barn. In my book the Viper achieves its worst score for this category and only receives a seven out of a possible ten.
6. Overall Impressions
The quality of the stand has never been an issue. Summit knows how to produce a quality product. The welds on the aluminum are precise. The straps and seat material is always top shelf and Summit has never really skimped on what they provide to the hunter. Their customer service is just outstanding and they stand behind their stands the way Excalibur stands behind their crossbows, so that is really saying something as Excalibur wrote the book and is the standard by which all others are judged.
Overall, I like this stand. If I had to only use one climbing stand for all of my hunts would this be the stand I would choose? No, it would not. But I can tell you this. I will use this stand a lot. I will use it on hunts where I don’t have to pack it in for any distance, and for me, that is the majority of the places I hunt. Once again, I am now sixty years old so take that into consideration. You young bucks out there can probably horse this thing over hill and dale with no problem.
I do like this stand enough to place it in the top three of all the stands I have tested. To be more precise, it would come in at number two. If anyone else has experience with this stand please by all means jump in and tell us all what you think. Also, I will do my best to answer any questions that arise regarding this stand here in this thread.
The next stand to be reviewed will be the Timbertall Brute Lite.
