Thanks KC. I am sure your advice is more current than mine. And is ultimately appropriate when immediate transport is available.
I was first aid certified in 1974, when American Red Cross still trained in tracheotomies and other real trauma needs.
Then I stayed certified for about thirty five years. The last ten years of which was instructions on use of cell phone. LOL. Since then, we have only CPR certified.
Back in '74, we were told to loosen the tourniquet every four hours. Later classes said never loosen the tourniquet as chances were that you would not subsequently be able to stop the bleeding, and the limb was lost anyway.
While I have been happy to have the training and will to use it. The truth is, fortunately, almost all of my first aid ministrations involving blood loss has been with four legged critters.
A hunting buddy nearly excised his second finger at the first joint using a knife in a stupid manner while dressing an elk. We dressed it with strips torn from his daughter's flannel shirt and stopped the blood flow.
We were six hours from camp and still had to get the elk on the horses. Plus we had another bull to retrieve the next day. A before daylight to well after dark venture.
I had a proper first aid kit in the camper and dressed the wound properly that night. Unfortunately, the only antibiotic available was Neosporin, but it turned out to be enough.
Of course, if the injury had been life threatening, the elk would have been left to the ravens and coyotes. But we were still seven or eight hours from phone service.
As it turned out, the blade missed the tendons, and the darned guy never even went in for stitches when we got home. But he has a hell of a lump on the side of that finger ten years later, that he should not have.
Fortunately the vast majority of first aid needs, not involving serious thoracic or abdominal trauma, can usually be addressed with kit on hand. A shredded shirt as bandage, magazines or branches as splints, foil or plastic wrap (sandwich baggie) to seal a sucking chest wound.
One should not throw hands in air and give up in an emergency simply because he does not have a "professional grade trauma kit" on hand.
