hey guys this is kevin estella i'm here with austin lester we are the subject matter experts
with field craft survival in terms of all things survival bushcraft and in this case medicine uh
in terms of what the hunter or the outdoorsman should have on them and be prepared for because
let's face it accidents do happen yeah and it's never it never is going to happen to me but it
happens to somebody else yeah until it happens to you yeah it's not happening to me until i admit
that it's happened to me yeah and you know just like you know your fishing story like the fish
starts off this big and it gets this big and that big you know you hold fish out so it gets like
super long like we all know that sportsman they always tell the truth they do yeah they're they're
never falsifying information never but it's uh it's one of those things that i think is super
underappreciated in a lot of aspects of being an outdoorsman and um growing up doing that and
being in that environment i mean it wasn't even a thought for any of my family members or friends
you know of having med stuff and until i started working for county ems did i really start to see
the benefit of carrying it every day and then tying that into being an outdoorsman and then
what do i actually need to carry and what are really like common injuries for people yeah and
i think when we start off and we're planning our hunting fishing our our trapping trips whatever it
may be we always plan for success right we we think about all right i've got my my cleaning
kit for my fish when i catch my fish or my kill kit when i have to you know field dress a deer
or whatever but we that planning for success often makes us forget about the things that could happen
that we don't want to think about but they are very realistic uh scenarios that happen
every single year to outdoorsmen so we've got a number of items here of things that
you probably should carry and we'll tell you you know why you should carry it and back it up with
some actual history here so yeah and so first off like one of the first things that i think of
for as an injury that can happen is cold and heat injuries because the first thing we're going to
be doing is out in the environment right so we know that something super simple you can pack
and carry is a survival wrap was what it's called here but it's just a survival blanket something
that allows me to keep all my body heat close to me um and then also it's bright in
color to you know to signify that it's been an emergency but heat and cold can both be solved
you know with something like this because when we're treating for someone that has
a traumatic injury or something along those lines you have to remember when your body loses a lot
of blood that's what keeps us at 98.6 so you can actually get what's called secondary hypothermia
and without going down the rabbit hole of what that is essentially when you lose all
that blood your body is going to cool off your core temperature is going to cool off so even in
a hot environment having something like this to warm somebody up that's been injured or yourself
is super important yeah and i think something that it needs to be said is a lot of people think that
these emergency blankets they're going to generate heat and they don't right they reflect heat back
and one of the places where you're going to encounter the most heat loss is directly
from the ground so if you have a person i mean i'm not a medical professional i can't say a
patient i know you definitely can and doctors can right so when you've got a person on the ground
a patient on the ground you want to make sure that they're not just laying flat on the ground
and just putting that on the ground isn't going to protect you from the conduction cooling of
the ground so that'll keep your warmth in but it's not going to generate any warmth on its own
yeah super important so but even heat like i said heat or cold a lot of people
will look at it and they think oh i only need that for whenever it's really cold like here it
is here in utah but it's definitely not the case even in the in the warm months it's important to have one
now this one uh i was i was telling austin before we got on camera about an eye injury that i
i sustained and we think we're all tough right like you can go to the gym you can
bench a lot you could you know you could get into a rolling match with someone and tap them out you
could think you're like the toughest guy in the world there is so much truth to uh the idea that
we can't grow muscles on our eyes right we could we could get jacked but i can't build muscles
on my eyes in the minute that you injure your eye you are 50 effective in terms of being able to see
so uh it for outdoorsman this happens all the time right like you're a fisherman
you're following your buddy right worst case scenario someone is doing a back cast and you get
hooked in the eye that's never happened to me but what has happened to me on multiple occasions is
you're walking someone pulls the branch and it's you usually have to establish like you're going
to call heads or something right and if you don't you have the jerk friend that doesn't say anything
and they let that thing fly and it hits you right in the eye so tell us what is what is this yeah so
this is just a little eye cup um and i'll actually get this one out so you can see a little better
um super super basic piece of equipment right just a little piece of plastic it's contoured to
be able to fit around the eye but what you're looking at with with something like this is
protecting the already injured eye and so a few things to consider with that is always covering
one obviously the injured eye but two you may even especially with a something that's maybe
protruding out you want to go ahead and cover the other eye as well so then because obviously
there's very few of us that can move eyes individually but whenever you move one eye the
other one moves with it and so if you're covering them both and keeping that person from even trying
to look around it's going to prevent as much damage in that other eye so having something
like this that can cover the eye keep it protected from anything touching it because what's the first
thing we want to do when something gets in our eyes yeah you want to always touch it you want to
rub it and you always end up making things worse when you do that so you have to think through
when that happens and especially as an outdoorsman if i'm going to be on a couple of days of a hunt
you know it starts and it hurts initially and then maybe you think it goes away but it'll come back
it seems like twofold later and you can actually cause a lot of damage by doing that so
covering it and protecting it is super important but we will be doing a ton of training videos on
how to actually use them yeah i was telling austin earlier i had a corneal abrasion and the slightest
bit of pressure on that eye hurt like hell and the way that the eye doctor described it to me
the abrasion was horizontal so every time that i would blink my eye it was like i had a cut on
my hand that i was putting inside of a pocket opening up that injury and this is actually
what i had on my eye for 72 hours while my eye was healing and i came very close to losing vision so
if i can stress one thing to you protect your eyes you might not look like the coolest guy
in the world you know cutting wood chopping wood splitting wood whatever but wear eye protection
it's gonna it's gonna protect you in the long run yeah even just clear glasses when you're
moving through brush could be really beneficial um but next up i wanna i think splinting is a
really important one because uh just like you said you're 50 effective with one eye down well
you're probably even less effective if you're if you're down a leg or if you've rolled an ankle
broken a bone especially a long bone fracture or something like that can really hinder you
and especially if you've moved in a great distance into an area like if you're hunting
you got to think through that what would happen if i'm now i'm not as mobile as i once was so uh
actually being able to splint a rolled ankle even if it's just a sprain or a twist but having the
ability to splint a fracture as well can promote your ability to actually get yourself out of there
and not just being stuck in that one location so a sam splint's a really good option to
carry weighs nothing it's just a little piece of aluminum essentially it's about three feet long
it's probably about five inches wide but then it's got this foam material around it and uh it's super
beneficial for that and just taking this splinting off an ankle splinting off a wrist or a long bone
and then tying it off with just a bandana or duct tape or whatever you need to do
to secure it it's super easy to use yeah i think there have been a lot of stories of people who
have fallen out of tree stands right common injury um you think about it you go up into
a tree stand early in the morning you're there before the sun rises and you're sitting all day
you're not really moving and next you know you get up to adjust you get up to go pursue the deer
that you just shot and now you fall out of your tree stand so you can injure yourself that way
you can injure yourself dragging a deer right you can injure yourself just tripping and putting your
hand down to brace yourself i mean uh we're not on a on like a combatives mat you're not just gonna
break fall a lot of people will put their hand down and break their break their wrists so it
makes a lot of sense yep it's uh and like i said it weighs nothing and um there's a million and one
survival uses for these as well you know if if you were in a worst-case scenario you can do a lot of
really cool stuff with these yeah what was the one you were talking about at the uh at the last class
we did you can use it as a reflective yeah yeah so that piece of aluminum if you break if you tear
down this foil under or tear down the foam around the aluminum inside here you can polish that up
with just a little bit of dirt and then use that as a reflective surface as a signal mirror so
it's pretty cool uh and then we'll go into uh booboo kids so one of the most uh one of the other
most underappreciated things is just a booboo kit right like everybody jokes and says oh i don't
need a band-aid i don't need to wear gloves or any of that stuff but when you're thinking about the
longevity of how long you're going to be out something as small as a nick on a finger can
really you know it'll get worse over time because you have way higher chance for infection and
other bacteria to get in there and cause a lot of problems so having like triple antibiotic ointment
some band-aids and then some other just this looks like uh antiseptic towelettes in here
stuff like that super big deal to carry as well as gloves and when you go to treat things like that
i know i'm not the cleanest dude when i go to the woods but um wearing gloves only when you go to
the woods only when i go to the only one it's not the cleanest of them but stuff like that and then
also and you brought up a point earlier knowing the difference between carrying a booboo kit and
what true trauma is and knowing whenever obviously this isn't going to help me anymore and i need to
look at bigger better options to treat whatever the injury could be yeah i can count on this many
fingers how many times i've actually needed to pull out a clotting factor or tourniquet to use
on myself but i can't count on all these fingers and toes all 22 of them um how many times i've
needed bandages or stuff like that for when i've accidentally cut myself and i mean i use knives
every single day and anyone that tells you that they haven't cut themselves is probably a liar
so i mean let's think about it we have broadheads okay and people are often too lazy to break out a
broadhead wrench so they twist it with their fingers not realizing that it's a razor blade
so you can cut yourself like that you can cut yourself going through briars i mean the
list goes on and on and if you're only carrying trauma gear you're missing part of the equation
that's incredibly important yeah absolutely and broadheads brings up another really good one
is uh the tourniquet and uh this should be the staple of every kit that you ever carry because
this is the number one loss reason for loss of life is is massive hemorrhage so knowing
how to use a tourniquet appropriately it can't be stated enough so carrying one and i actually
will usually carry more than one i'll try to carry one for myself or two for myself and
then one for everybody else in the crew that i'm going to be with but i like to have a bunch of
these but super important to have and know how to use because massive hemorrhage is something
that and coming from the military something that really caught me off guard when i joined
and we talked about these statistics is that somewhere in the 80 percentile range of injuries
that happen on the battlefield could have been uh those lives could have been saved with just
a tourniquet if they had been applied correctly and in the right amount of time so to me that's
that's a that's a no-brainer so i mean obviously guys there are so many things that you could carry
you're going to custom tailor the kit that you get the kit that you assemble to your own needs i mean
we'd even talk about the medication that you might want to have handy um having a list of like your
medical condition that you could give to all the members of your party in case you guys get
get injured or whatever um but you just want to use a clear mind when you're coming up with all
these ideas i know it's super exciting to to want to carry all this cool stuff and get the latest
gear when it comes out in the hunting catalog but make sure your basics are covered before you start
buying all the cool guy stuff yeah and a lot of people will buy kits and they're really
mickey mouse and or somebody will sell you a kit online that has all these great things and
it weighs nothing or whatever their their spiel is but pin light like a pin light yeah i think i
have one here badass pen light yeah like the awesome pin light that you can carry and but a lot of
people even notice for they end up just lighting up and doing something else with it but i mean
this is used to check a pupillary response in a in a victim that has had a head injury or something
along those lines and people don't even know that and they don't give you any training with that
and it doesn't even make sense to have unless you have the knowledge base to know how to use it so
having a kit that's bare bones that's super small lightweight and this is one of our kits at
fuelcraft and the hunter response kit the med kit but it's small it's lightweight um and it has all
the essentials in it right like something that's no-nonsense and we even put this one together just
because of the experiences that we have here in house between mike and kevin and then you and i
put it together built it out with the things that make the most sense for the outdoorsman so
just make sure whether you have our kit or anybody's kit that you would buy or
put together that you have the essentials in there that makes sense to have in there
alright guys so that kind of wraps up our first video um we're really excited to be doing this
collaboration with the eastmans and bringing you guys some survival preparedness knowledge
for the outdoorsmen um be sure to check us out on uh all the social media platforms we
have instagram youtube we got a big channel on youtube we got locals check us out for sure on
locals this is where we'll where we do all of our kind of premier content where we'll do the
training videos on each one of these items and some of the other items that we carry
and let's not forget you can also check us out in person here in heber city we're going to be
running classes throughout the year so stop on by you can learn all sorts of content on
survival mobility health related topics right here at the fieldcraft survival headquarters and i know
the goal here is we're just trying to build and that's that's why we kind of collaborated
with eastmans and we all kind of on that same wavelength of of building a community of people
that are just better prepared have more knowledge and that way we're all an asset not a liability