The mornings that go sideways
- Field dressing, bad angle. The knife slips and a forearm opens up — more blood than seems reasonable. Direct pressure, held without peeking, is the whole game.
- November creek. Your partner goes in at the beaver dam. Ten minutes later he’s shivering like a paint mixer — and the truck is two drainages away.
- “It’s just the coffee.” Your buddy at the tailgate is sweaty, gray, and rubbing his chest. The most dangerous sentence in the woods is “I’m fine.”
Five lessons before opening day
In the order your seasons serve them up:
- Bleeding & Wounds — pressure, packing, tourniquets — the sharp-object curriculum
- Cold Injuries — immersion, hypothermia, and the wrap
- Medical Emergencies — chest pain, denial, and aspirin
- Provider Safety — one patient must not become two
- Evacuation — getting help to a spot with no address
Then pressure-test it
Interactive scenarios — one decision at a time, tempting mistakes included, debrief at the end:
- Stop Peeking — hold pressure — the timer resets when you look
- The Burrito — cold-water immersion, wrapped right
- It’s Not Indigestion — the tailgate chest pain
The certification question, honestly. “Wilderness First Aid” isn’t a regulated credential. No government body defines what a WFA card means — it means whatever the company that printed it says it means. What counts in front of a patient is whether you can do the work. This course teaches the work, free, and issues a record of completion — not a certificate, and we won’t pretend otherwise. If an outfitter or employer wants a provider’s card, take their class — this makes it easy. If nobody requires you to hold a card, what you need are the skills, not the laminate.
Asked at the tailgate
Is a tourniquet overkill for a hunting pack?
No. Broadheads and skinning knives make exactly the wounds tourniquets exist for, and the doctrine is tourniquet-first for a life-threatening limb bleed — not “try pressure for ten minutes and hope.” A commercial tourniquet weighs a few ounces and rides next to the tags. Lesson 4 covers when and how.
What do you do when someone falls from a treestand?
Treat the ground, not the story. A fall from height is a high-energy mechanism: keep him still, ask the spine questions, and resist the urge to sit him up to “see if he’s okay.” The conservative call is the right call every time.
What does a heart attack look like in the field?
Often like a guy insisting it’s the coffee. Crushing chest pressure with sweating means all exertion stops, he sits down, he chews an aspirin if nothing forbids it, and help starts moving now. Denial is part of the presentation — plan for it.
What this is
Fifteen lessons, a 40-question knowledge check, sixteen practice scenarios, a printable field reference card, and a kit checklist. Free, no account, nothing recorded about you, source on GitHub. It teaches decision-making, not hands-on skill — practice the hands-on parts on a real, padded, complaining friend.
Other far-from-town neighbors: off-grid homesteaders & self-reliance folks · ranchers, farmers & rural landowners · big game hunters & backcountry bowhunters