Nothing serious or life threatening here. Cut my finger pretty deep, once, out checking traps…didn’t really have a first aid kit, so I wrapped some toilet paper around it, wrapped a rubber band around that, and put my glove on and kept going. Learned (again) to be more careful with what direction I was cutting. Had the rubber band too tight, and by the time I got home, the end of my finger was blue and cold…lucky I didn’t lose it to frostbite. Come to think of it, with some of the close calls I have had with getting hurt, I SHOULD put together a first aid kit…just haven’t yet…LOL!

Michael

Only serious run in I’ve had was swimming off the estuary after getting caught out by a rising tide, I was OK in the water only a short swim but got very cold hiking back to the truck it was not that cold but the windchill was bad, things were turning blue and thankfully the key was easy to get to.

I was parked by a ford, grabbed my dry bag, dumped all the wet gear and was now stark naked drying off when the postman drove thru the ford, he never looked twice as though it was an every day site.

Dog thought it was fun swimming with the boss.

Mark.

Nothing happened to me other than an occasional twist or sprain, but what I’m most afraid of is cutting a major artery with knife or broadhead. I’m extra aware of that at all times.

My friend took a good header a few years ago and broke his wrist in a couple of places. I cut my finger in camp on night, too far to go out for stitches, so my bud who is a military man (Ex Ranger)graciouslly offered to stitch me up with his suture kit he had with him. Several rums later and I was good to go!! Hurt like hell though! I always carry a first aid kit, some bandages, and some QuikClot just in case the worst case scenario happens!

A safety harness kept me from hitting the ground after a fall from a deer stand………

Closest I’ve come to being seriously injured out in the field.

I’ve been quite lucky personally in the backcountry, but I’ve dealt with a number of others that I’ve been responsible for. The scariest one, hands-down, was a woman who had spontaneously developed internal GI bleeding, and was going into serious shock, while I was leading a trip on a remote stretch of coast in Chilean Patagonia.

Internal issues are obviously very hard to diagnose in the field, and she was clearly going downhill fast. This was before sat phones became required equipment on those trips, and we couldn’t get a response from the Navy on the regular VHF hailing channels. I finally made the call to active the EPIRB, but in that part of the world, that could still mean 24 hours or more before a response. In desperation, we finally hiked to a fishing village, found someone with an open boat and enough gasoline to make the 11-mile trip to the closest port town with a hospital. It was upwind against a 15-18 knot breeze and opposing seas. Did I mention it was an open boat? It was brutal trying to transport someone that way who was in pain with every slight movement.

More than any other backcountry first-aid experience I’ve had, that one really spooked me. Had just a few factors been different – such as if we hadn’t made the decision to cross a very exposed, 3-mile channel the day before, if there hadn’t been a village within hiking distance…we could have had a grave situation on our hands.

My take home lessons from that? Always have multiple contingencies planned, make sure your systems are tested, know the emergency response options in your area, and be conservative when it comes to internal/GI issues in the backcountry. Better to evac someone for something that turns out to be benign, than have someone going into septic shock, hours or days from qualified help. And we tend to focus a lot on injuries that can happen in the backcountry, but first aid scenarios that don’t involve injuries happen too. And you don’t need to be in a remote part of the world for all of that to be true.