Never had a chain saw kick back, but I don't use them anywhere near as much as most wood burners here. When I used to use them, I always kept my left hand in contact with the safety guard so the blade brake would kick off as soon as the saw kicked back. At this point (after several near misses with other things besides kickback) I prefer to let the pros do what they do best and let me take it easy.
But don't let your years of experience lull you into complacency. I'm a woodworker with over 30 years experience. I only had two kickbacks with a table saw in all those years. The first occurred about 25 years ago, soon after I acquired my table saw. That one threw a 2" x 2" x 12" long square I was making a hammer handle out of into my right hip so hard I thought I broke it. The second one - which almost took my life and left me nearly blind in my right eye - happened about 2 1/2 years ago. I was so used to nothing ever happening that I completely spaced out the sound of a block of wood ringing against the blade. Just as I was reaching down to shut the power off, the block of wood reached up to hit me near the right temple at about 175 MPH.
The force was so great that I was knocked back a few feet, the impact severe enough to almost make me lose consciousness and I fell to my knees. When I recovered enough to stand I noticed that everything was blurry. Then it all got bright red, then yellow, then my vision vanished. I called upstairs to my wife that I was in serious trouble. The saw was still running, so she shut it off and turned to help me. There was blood everywhere, and I knew right away I might lose the eye. When I went upstairs to look at it, the entire iris was grey (I have brown eyes) and the eye was unresponsive and just lifeless looking.
I went through a horrible ordeal, forced to sit in a recliner without moving for three weeks so the artery I busted inside the eye could heal. A re-bleed would have meant certain and permanent blindness. The intraocular pressure went right off the chart (almost 50 at one point; normal is about 12-15) and they thought I might suffer optic nerve damage. Then I developed a severe cataract, but there was so much other inner damage that I had to go to a trauma eye specialist in Philadelphia to do the surgery. He had to put "extra parts" in there and said it was "touch and go" for a while, but he is one of the best in the country at traumatic cataract surgery (he did Larry Holmes' eyes), so I consider myself blessed that I found him, and that my insurance would cover "out of the system" procedures. The list of bad stuff that happened just went on and on. Now, over two years later, I have partial vision (but terrible depth perception) in the eye. My pupil is permanently "blown" (won't constrict like the other one), I have glaucoma, retinal scarring, etc. More surgeries are likely to be needed over time. All because of one careless moment by a guy who was smug as hell about his tool skills.
So be careful out there, boys and girls. I hate to look like I'm preaching, but an out-of-control chain saw can do a lot more damage than a block of wood can do. It happens in a heartbeat, and then you have the rest of your life to fret about what might have been, if only...
