Manfred

First off I apologize for the length of this but I have some facts for those who don't wear a safety harness. This will also make those who do wear one feel better about it. I work at a hospital in the middle of Wisconsin, we are the only truama center in the area and we see are fair share of tree stand injuries. I got a hold of a study done on tree stand injuries. These were people that didn't wear a harness and fell an average of 15ft. Out of 51 falls over a 5 year period 52% had spinal injuries, 40% had extermity injuries, 24% had closed head injuries, 22% had pulmonary contusions/rib fractures, 12% suffered exposure, and there was a 10% fatality rate. As you can see these add up to more than 100%, so you can concure that some had multiple injuries. Only those injuries that were the result of the fall were entered in the study while those that included injury from a weapon were left out (thats a whole nother study)There were other injuries too but I just chose the highest percentages. The average length of stay in the hospital; was close to 6 days. Some of the patients reported the accident was due to falling asleep in the stand, recoil from the weapon, alcohol structural failure and improper stand placement. One fatality was the result of a belt type harness that strangled the person when the harness slid up around his neck. 100% of the accident vitims were male and the average age was 42.9. Now some basic physics, when you fall you are accelerating at a rate of 32 feet per second/per second. This means if you fall for one second you'll be going 32 feet per second, 2 seconds, 64 ft/sec and so on. So lets say you fall 15 feet or roughly 3 meters. That means you'll be accelerating at about 3 meters per second/second. To find out with what force your going to hit the ground at, you multiple your mass with the acceleration. Now say you weigh 200 pounds (90.72Kg), That means you'll hit the ground with 272 Kg of force or 600 pounds of force. 3 TIMES YOUR WEIGHT. Thats like standing still and getting hit by a 10 pound bowling ball traveling at 181 feet per second or roughly 30 miles per hour. These figures may not exact but they are close enough to that you get the point. Some pretty sobering thoughts. All I can say is please wear a good safety harness when in your tree stands, let someone know where your going and when to expect you back or take a cell phone or some other communication device if at all possible. I'd hate to hear of any of you ending up at our or any other hospital.