Hey all,
I know lanyards have their place, i.e., very useful while cleaning and skinning out game, and SOMETIMES over water. But......
I know a bowhunter that would probably freak a little seeing all these lanyards. One time he was up in a tree stand. There was a small branch in his sight line, so he steps down and on to a large branch. He slips his hand through a lanyard on his belt knife, pulls it out and reaches out to pull cut the offending branch. Since you're reading it here, the branch makes a cracking sound and he half slips, half jumps before the branch breaks. He realizes he has the knife in his hand, so he tries to toss it out of the way. The lanyard worked, so when he hit the ground the knife punches into his wrist, hits a bone, and goes sideways out the skin. This son-of-a-gun is so tuff that he pulled the knife out, went back to his truck, made a bandage with a t-shirt, and finished the hunt.
Bob knows he was incredibly lucky with the way it turned out. The blade was 4" long and a little over 1" wide. It went in parallel with the arm bones and ligaments, so it didn't cut anything that wouldn't heal on its own. The blade actually popped out a little piece of bone and went between ligaments and the bone when it went out the side.
Bob said that it was an almost routine thing to do, so he didn't really think about it ending the way it did.
1. The branch he was standing on was only 6-7 feet up, so he wasn't too concerned about falling or having to jump.
2. The tree is a regular of his, he'd actually trimmed little sucker branches off that same spot the same way several other times in previous years.
3. He didn't want to drop the knife and have to climb down to get it.
He had the reflexes to try to throw the knife away from him, if it hadn't been for the lanyard it would have been a roll in the dirt and some cussing. And to top it off, the branch didn't even break, or as far as he can tell, even crack. It's still on the tree looking healthy.
The moral of the story is to think about the possible consequences when you use the lanyard to (more or less) permanently connect yourself to a sharp instrument. It might be that losing the knife is the preferable outcome.