Oh, just to add...I've sent quite a few sheaths over to Iraq and Afghanistan, both to "Contractors" and to military folks. Main complaint they have against Kydex is the noise when you withdraw the knife.
As one of the Recon guys told me "It's just enough noise to get you killed".
But I wouldn't guess the noise would bother anyone on a camping trip or the like.
You can draw kydex slowly and fairly quiet...but I agree that leather is better in this respect. I have'nt encountered a scenario where this has made a difference but could forsee circumstances where it might come to play. These days though it is virtually impossible to move quietly with all the gear issued... I tried to train some guys recently who were wanting to keep a flack vest on during a ghillie crawl....they were so far off the ground it was ridiculous....took some photo's and they could hardly credit how bad it was either...all told you cannot operate effectively with all this armour...so the issue of "kydex scrape" or "press stud snap" hardly seems to matter.
I saw one guy with a Molle Vest who had all the pockets front side filled because he had a patrol sack on complete with a camel liquid pack go down into a firing position and his head was about a foot off the ground...and he was about as stable as a see-saw...just a recipe for getting "fragged" straight off...IMO...
