Thread: First Aid Kit

I've been looking into getting a first aid kit to keep in my pack but all the 'ready-made' ones seem inadequate for hunting. So I've decided I'll compile my own.

So what do you guys have in yours or what do you recommend to have in one? I'd like to include suture needles in mine - thinking worse case scenario is someone shoots or cuts themselves and a sticky plaster isn't going to do shit. What do you guys think?

I keep a fairly comprehensive kit at the hut but only carry a roll of insulation tape and a couple of plasters in my day bag

a lot of people just use tape and a cup of concrete

I carry some quikclot and a sealed army field dressing


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Originally Posted by sako75

I keep a fairly comprehensive kit...

Including a helicopter seemingly.

In my day pack and on my belt is a Israeli bandage and a tourniquet (CAT). I often only hunt with a smaller belt set-up so by having these in both the pack and belt I don't risk leaving them behind if I choose one over the other. That covers most "worst case" scenarios...

In my day pack and main pack I have a small general first aid kits that have a few plasters and the likes for those smaller niggles.

Originally Posted by Shooter

In my day pack and on my belt is a Israeli bandage...

One of the ones with the quick-clot powder infused in the bandage? Don't laugh, but another item worth carrying is a couple of tampons. They are, after all, designed to plug bleeding holes.

Ok, you can commence laughing now.

tampons have a couple of uses 1s obvious and as said plugging a wound also a sterile swab and also tinder for fire lighting

Originally Posted by northdude

tampons have a couple of uses 1s obvious and as said plugging a wound also a sterile swab and also tinder for fire lighting

Tampons r not good in a first aid sense. They are designed to absorb blood.....you want something to stop/slow down blood flow.....


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Originally Posted by stretch

One of the ones with the quick-clot powder infused in the bandage? Don't laugh, but another item worth carrying is a couple of tampons. They are, after all, designed to plug bleeding holes.

Ok, you can commence laughing now.

Nope just your standard one, they are bloody awesome and can provide a tone of pressure on the said wound via the "Ratchet" system contained within.

Obviously speaking from practical experience. All I know is what I heard learnt at a first aid course.......pretty much fuck all by the sound of it


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Your quotes put the whole first aid training seanarios into a context that I can understand. I work on a farm n would look at some of the stuff they'd say n think yeah right. Some of the courses are a box ticking thing to get a piece of paper to say you can do 'xyz ' n of some limited value. There's still stuff there to be learnt but you gotta put it in context with what you are likely to be doing usually.


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The basics are what I carry. Something to stop bleeding, something to keep the wind and rain off and good pain relief. We are lucky in NZ help will usually be there within 24hrs.

Originally Posted by Tussock

If you can't figure out how to make use of a sterile piece of compressed highly absorbent material in an emergency, best take a back seat and let someone resourceful take over.

Yes, you can cause problems as they will suck up blood, but that just depends on how much blood you have to suck up. If you plug a gushing wound with one it will expand in the wound, so there needs to be room. Wounds don't stretch like the location the device is designed for. If there is room, sucking blood up is unlikely to be an issue as it will be hosing out anyway, so I am dubious about the ability to crash blood pressure. Can gauze absorb blood faster than it can hose out a 1" hole? Ideally though, you have saline on hand. You shove it in, then you pump saline into the back of it. You fill it with saline, not blood. Then it makes a very good bleeding stopped in a pinch.

Good to remember that bandages stop bleeding by absorbing blood and giving it something to clot into. So put a bandage on and keep it still, so the clots can form. The blood can then clot backwards into the wound once bleeding slows.
People talk about first aid as if an ambulance is coming, because that is how it is taught. But first aid methodology is about response time. Do first aid in the city and it is tailored towards a response time of 10 minutes. I am expected to have the same qualification, even though the response time where I work (the back of beyond) is up to 48 hours. When I was in Ethiopia there was one airfield 3 hours drive away and a domestic flight once a day, and we were out of chopper range, if there had been choppers on that part of the continent. There were none.

So the dos and don't blur. If you want whoever is of you not to die, then you way up where you are, what you have, and how long you need to prevent the dying until you can hand that task over to someone more qualified. People tell you you do do this or you don't do that for reasons of legal liability. The reality is that decision will be yours to make at the time. I have always said to hell with legal liability. If I have to take my lashes so be it, I will never let that cloud my judgement. They can pass their judgement after the fact, as is their way.

The reality is, put yourself or someone else with a big hole in them, and then we will see what you will and won't do.

One thing is for sure, if you have a bleeder and no one has a first aid cut full of battle dressings, you can rest assured if there are women around someone has a purse full of them. Many of them can be stretched out flat. They are flat and are pressed into a cylinder.
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As for the rest of the thread, tape and a cup of concrete is for people who don't go out enough to worry about real accidents. Not sure these people are the ones to take advice from when it comes to matching your preparedness to your response time.

For example, my former boss felt the urge to work in Fiordland with me, for up to a month at a time, with a 15% tear in his achilles. The time window for sewing one up is 8 hours. So at any given moment walking through the hills, I was considering me evac, because the bloody thing could have gone at any time and from that moment on I had 8 hours to get him from where I was to an orthopaedic ward.

I did my own Evac for my own smashed leg in the same way. 3 hours, from desert hill top to orthopaedic ward (then another 3 to see a doctor).

Every ones a hard bastard till one of their bones is sticking out the side of them and the bugs are chewing at the hole. Then I hope you have your cement handy while you change your GPS to lat/long because pilots can't work in easting and northing.

I have my work first aid kits. I did my last first aid training with an International SOS consultant who is an ambulance officer in Johannesburg. There is not a form of burned, smashed, lacerated or otherwise mangled human she has not put back together, and Africans being Africans, they don't die when they are supposed to. So her work is often on people in a pretty phenomenal state of disrepair. Best of all, they don't have the legal silliness. She would say "if it works, you use it, don't worry about it man" (typical strong gorgeous South African woman).

I have my kits and she has gone over them and said they were ideal. I have them nicely balanced for what might happen to you vs not endangering yourself by carrying too much junk. When I was running exploration camps I used them as a template and bought bulk first aid supplies (WAY CHEAPER) and made the company kits. Got sick of a silly blue or red bag with nothing in it and a cross on the outside, that ticked a company check list and did nothing else.

I can also source good quality first aid supplies out of South Africa at good rates. Some very cool stuff.

I was going to package them up, make a heap and offer them to the forum but its on the back burner.

If I did it, would there be much interest? I typically do a big camp one, a belt/car/boat sized one that can be re-stocked from the camp one, and then a really little belt sized one. They all clip together. I use Cordura pouches to house them (even the big one) and they get set up internally to come out of the bag in the order things are needed (gloves at bottom = me mad). The fragile stuff can be protected by the padded stuff, so a soft dense bag that packs well can be used. I hate all that dead air in every kit.

Due to the nature of my work, I have actually used them a lot and learned in the process. Don't drink cement. Its caustic, sets in your stomach and you end up yet another weirdo in A and E with an assumed sexual fetish. Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it I say.

Yes interested in your kits.
Have been looking for some time for something better than what is on offer.
What was the course that you did in Joburg?
Will be down there in January.
Cheers

Thanks for your input guys. By the looks of it, I was thinking of including way too much stuff. I think I can rule out carrying concrete and a helicopter around the hills.