I recently purchased a Hawk Kwik-Grab Crossbow stand. I found it hard to hang the crossbow like a regular bow while in a tree and retrieve it as easily as a bow. It’s not easy to keep a crossbow in the lap and I don’t like putting it on the ground when I’m in a blind or sitting at ground level.
This stand looked like it would work fine in both a tree stand and on the ground, but you’d think it was complete trash by the Amazon reviews. So I purchased it to see if the reviews were correct, because something just told me that I could work with this thing.
Sure enough, I was right. A little DIY and a little less expectation means that I have a pretty good solution for what I need.
First, let’s talk about the ground set up.
When I look at this, my expectation was never that this was going to float the entire crossbow off the ground, but rather it holds it in place, with the crossbow’s foot stirrup resting on the ground, the limbs might rest on the arms (depending on how wide your crossbow is) and the stock of the bow on the cradle. Sure enough, that’s how it works.
That’s exactly what I want – and if I need to pull it in tighter, I can raise the cradle and it holds the crossbow where I need it.
What I’ve found is those arms are really useful for being up in the tree-stand, and this is where I had to do some DIY.
It comes with a curved bar and a u-bolt that can help hold this thing to a tree stand, like so:
The stand fits into the curved bar as it’s a square tube. The u-bolt is supposed to attach the curved bar to the stand.
It’s fine for a tree stand with a thick edge or thick grids for the platform, but I have an XOP Cold World which is a light-weight aluminum stand and nothing is thick on it. So the u-bolt didn’t exactly work how I wanted, it could never tighten the stand to the platform. But I liked the idea so I came up with a different solution:
I got some 18 gauge 3/4″ aluminum square tubing. I don’t tig weld and I don’t know anyone who is skilled enough at tig to do aluminum, so I used u-bolt support plates, carriage bolts and nuts with nylon/locking inserts to secure the tube to the platform. I drilled a hole to put a round locking pin through the tube and stand and it works just fine. I don’t like having to use a nut/bolt to secure the stand to the bracket, fumbling around with something like that in the dark, or when I’m trying to get set up isn’t my idea of a good time. A simple locking pin is much better.
It’s in there tight, I yanked on the stand and it’s not moving. And it works just fine at holding the crossbow:
We’ll see how it all works out when I get up in the tree next fall, but so far, I’m not disappointed! It may not have come to me perfect, but just adjusting expectations and being willing to modify and tinker, versus just returning the thing and not having anything at all. I’m happy!
Credits: First and third pictures are from Hawk’s website. Rest are mine.