My dad climbs in Wolverine Gore Tex hunting boots from Cabella's and he likes them. I use logger/lineman boots.
no need to get into the tennis shoe mentality when it comes to your prunes. wear your steel toe SAFETY boot. the one you wear day in day out. just tread lightly if you are concerned about tree. imiagine that one day your not wearing your boots in the tree and accidentally lay a running saw across your toe area. no thanks.
rec climbing? sure wear your hikers.
funny you learning all this new sh1t. i see our game as having a few different disciplines to the climbing technique.
you have on the ground pruning of the ornamental variety. to me this type of work drives me crazy. others find comfort in it. i see it everyday where i currently work. they love making those little trees look good. not enough action for me, and i dislike hand snips. lol
then you have the pruning attitude. get up into that tree from the tip to toe and walk all the branches making cuts. anything rubbing, competing for space, growing back to the inside, growing vertically of the main branch. there's more. but i am not all that good at it, so i will not try to tell you how to do it. this type of climbing definitely takes athleticism. tree forced yoga posing to make a few cuts in precarious places in the tree. for sure your not soft if you a climbing like that.
then you have the takedown climbing. just all out bum rushing of the tree. sometimes you have space, sometimes you dont. maybe you get to spend 6 hours in a tree rign the absolute dog snot out of it but you gotta do what you gotta do to get the tree down. this takes a certain effort. especially day in day out. a mind set that makes it tough to accept a new way to do things because the way they have been done works.
then you have crane work. a different animal in its own right. yah it takes less "work" when its around but if you dont know your cuts or you have no idea where to set the chokers to compensate for weighted sides then you are in for a long day too.
so in closing i guess its not that everyone does things different, its just that with so many disciplines to our game there are a million ways to do it.
to truely be a stud climber you have to have some time in all phases.
oh yeah, chances are good that if you can do all this well, than you should be able to run a bucket too.