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Climbing stick strap durrability

Just finished hanging some stands and because the land is far from my home I decided to use screw in tree steps VS my LW climbing sticks as I can leave the bottom four steps out and put them in when I go hunting and I can leave the other tree steps in and they are virtually immune to the elements, and worse case some get stolen they cost a fraction of what my LW sticks cost. I had not used screw in steps for 5-6 years at least as I have 3 set of LW sticks as well two sets of Summit rapid steps. HOLLY CRAP but I forgot what a PITA screw in steps are, especially since two of the trees I set up in were black walnuts the two were hickorys. I'm no weakling at 6'2" and 245, but I have to admit 48 tree steps later and I was feeling it. It took my far longer and much, much more effort in the 90* heat to screw in the 12-14 steps per stand set up then it ever took me to hang 5 LW sticks. I have at least three more hang ons to put up and would like to use my climbing sticks and simply leave the first three off and put them up when I hunt that stand, I usually use 5 sticks. Im actually seriously considering hanging my stands then take down the sticks and put them back up when I hunt. I have at my disposal enough 10" black drain pipe I might make a camo storage container and hide my LW sticks in sight. I just rather not go through the hassle of installing another 36 tree steps. My only other option is to use my 18v bat drill and pre-drill the holes for the steps as I have done in the past years ago, but that is also kind of a PITA to do. My question is how durable are the straps in terms of handling the elements and UV from the sun for long term exposure? I'm not to worried about UV rays as I am hunting under some pretty thick tree canopy and not a lot of sun gets through. The sticks would be out for at least 3 months but no longer than four. Does LW sell replacement straps of you wear yours out or damage them? And lastly, has anyone ever worn out the straps on the LW climbing sticks and if you did how'd your replace them?

We have a variety of strap on and ladder stands (17 at last count, installed anywhere from 1 to 20 years ago) on our land (Private land we own so no major trespass issues) in East Central Kansas. Some of the strap on stands use climbing sticks and all of the ladder stands have straps holding the tops. We leave the stands out year round. When we install a new stand the original straps are trusted for two years. We then add new straps every couple of years (Stands and climbing sticks) but never have removed the older straps. We've never had a strap fail. The load on any individual strap decreases with each new strap and each time we add a new strap we have the original strength back so over time the absolute attachment strength increases. The cost of new straps, usually purchased on ebay, doesn't really amount to much given the increased safety.

On stands or climbing sticks that I leave out for longer periods I replace the straps with chains.

Have had a lot of straps chewed into by squirrels so I use chain.

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