Warning: My dollar store tent stake puller became a 45 minute ordeal

So I got this cheap orange stake puller from a dollar store in Boise last spring, figured it would save my back after a wet night. Thing is, it bent sideways on the second stake and then the handle snapped clean off. I spent 45 minutes on a muddy hillside using a rock and my boot heel to get eight stakes out, my dog just watching me like I was an idiot. Anyone else had a budget tool fail that turned a five minute job into a whole morning? Should I just go back to a claw hammer and call it done?

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miaharris24d ago

You really think a claw hammer would've done better on that muddy hillside? I've watched guys fight with hammers for twenty minutes on one stake, slipping and smacking their shins, so the tool wasn't the whole problem. A bent puller usually means the stake was set at an angle or the ground had gone rock hard under the mud, and no cheap tool fixes bad luck. Plus a hammer needs two hands and good aim, which is exactly what you don't have when you're standing in slop. The dollar store puller at least got one stake out before it quit, that's one more than your boot heel managed in the first five minutes. Buy the ten dollar one next time and quit blaming the orange thing for a bad night.

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