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The OOAL Edge Step Changes How You Think About Getting Up the Tree

· by Jesse Hartman
The OOAL Edge Step Changes How You Think About Getting Up the Tree

There's a quiet war being fought every time a mobile hunter shoulders a pack and heads into the timber. Every ounce is a negotiation. Every piece of gear either earns its spot or gets left at the truck. In spring 2026, Out On A Limb MFG dropped a new wrinkle into that equation — the OOAL Edge Step, built in collaboration with Wild Edge Inc. It's not a climbing stick. It's not a traditional aider. It's something that slots between both, and if you've been staring at your pack trying to figure out how to shave another pound, it deserves a hard look.

What the Edge Step Actually Is

The Edge Step is a purpose-built climbing step designed to work with OOAL's saddle hunting lineup — sticks, platforms, and aider systems. It comes in at around 7.2 ounces per step and folds down to roughly 7 inches when not deployed. That's svelte. The step itself is 5 inches wide, giving your boot enough real estate to stand on confidently, and it ships with a cam buckle strap per step for attachment to the tree. OOAL sells them individually, which matters — you build the system you actually need rather than paying for hardware you won't use.

The Wild Edge DNA in this thing is hard to miss. Wild Edge has long occupied a niche corner of the saddle hunting world, producing steps built around a cam-over locking principle that bites into the bark and holds. That philosophy carries through here. The cam buckle strap attachment keeps setup quick and — critically — quiet. No banging aluminum. No fumbling with pins in the dark. You deploy it, strap it, weight it, and move.

Where It Fits in a Mobile System

Here's where it gets interesting for the run-and-gun crowd. The Edge Step wasn't designed to replace your full stick setup outright. Think of it as a gap-filler. A lot of saddle hunters are already using aiders off the bottom stick to get extra elevation without hauling a fourth stick. The Edge Step takes that concept, hardens it with milled aluminum construction, and gives it a cleaner form factor than a rope loop hanging off a carabiner.

If you're running three sticks and a platform and you're still 18 inches short of where you want to be — this is your answer. Slap an Edge Step above your top stick, weight it, and you're there. Or run two Edge Steps below your first conventional stick to save carrying that entire bottom stick out of a tight piece of public ground. The modularity is the whole point.

  • Weight: ~7.2 oz per step — legitimate ultralight territory
  • Folded length: ~7 inches — packs flat without drama
  • Step width: 5 inches — enough foothold to trust
  • Attachment: cam buckle strap included per step
  • Sold individually — build the configuration you need

The Honest Tradeoffs

Nothing is free. Strap-on steps of any kind have a learning curve, full stop. The cam-over attachment style that Wild Edge pioneered rewards practice and punishes impatience. Get the strap tension wrong on a cold morning and the step will feel sketchy before it bites. Get it right and it locks like it grew there. The community consensus on Wild Edge-style steps has always been the same: practice in the backyard before you trust your life to it at 20 feet. That holds here.

The Edge Step also demands you commit to a method. It's not a plug-and-play swap for hunters who have their stick system dialed-in and don't want to think about it. But for guys who are already obsessing over ounces, already experimenting with aider-heavy climbs, already living in that ultralight headspace — this is a natural evolution.

Why This Collaboration Makes Sense

OOAL has been on a roll. Their SHIKAR stick lineup gave mobile hunters a legitimate USA-made option that competes on weight and build quality with the best in the game. Teaming with Wild Edge to bring a step solution into the same product family is smart. It means the geometry is already worked out — the Edge Step is designed to play nice with OOAL's existing stick hardware and anchor/cleat ecosystem.

The broader spring 2026 mobile hunting gear wave has been heavy on ultralight solutions, and the Edge Step fits that current perfectly. Bowhunter magazine flagged the trend in April 2026 with a roundup of new ultralight mobile products, and OOAL landed squarely in that conversation. The saddle hunting market keeps rewarding builders who think in systems rather than individual SKUs. The Edge Step is a system thinker's product.

Send it? Maybe not without a few backyard practice runs first. But for the mobile hunter who's already built their setup around OOAL hardware and wants a cleaner path to gaining elevation — this one's worth every ounce of attention.