The Woodsman's Journal Online: Woodcraft

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Sunday, December 14, 2025

Severe Bleeding, STOP the Bleed – Direct Pressure©

Author’s note – If you do not like gore, be warned due to the subject matter, some of the photos in this article are graphic.
Also, I hope that you enjoy learning from this resource! To help me to continue to provide valuable free content, please consider showing your appreciation by leaving a donation HERE. Thank you and Happy Trails!

Step One: Observe the Scene

First, ALWAYS, observe the accident scene and make sure it’s safe for the rescuer. One casualty is bad enough, two is worse, especially when one is the rescuer.

If the scene is safe, find the source of the bleeding. You might have to open, remove, tear, or cut away clothing to locate the wound. Observe the flow of blood, look to see how the blood is spilling out. Locate the specific area that is bleeding most heavily. Blood that flows continuously, or spurts out, is a sign of severe, life-threatening bleeding, and must be controlled FAST!

Step Two: Apply Direct Pressure

A typical blood pressure of 120 mm Hg signifies a forward pressure flow of blood through your arterial system driven by the heart's pumping action, pushing blood from high pressure in the aorta to lower pressure areas. Putting it in more practical terms, that forward pressure represents about 2.5 pounds per square inch, which is a very minimal pressure. Failure to control bleeding is rarely related to the amount of pressure required to occlude the bleeding blood vessel but rather getting that minimal pressure to the source of the bleeding.

To get enough pressure to the point of bleeding often requires much larger pressures on the outside of the body, so by the time the outside pressure dissipates through the overlying soft tissue and muscle, there is still enough pressure deep down to close the bleeding vessel.

Direct pressure can be applied either with your hands or if the wound is large or deep by packing the dressing into the wound first, before applying pressure, then pressing down. This helps to focus the pressure on the bleeding vessel deep inside the limb.

To reach the necessary level of pressure, make sure the injured body part is on a hard, flat surface, and push down hard, using your body weight if needed by kneeling and leaning over the wound.

If there is not a flat, hard surface to push against use the ‘clamshell direct pressure’ technique, where your fingers are interlaced. This method when used over the wound is very effective, quickly applied, needs little training, and requires no additional equipment. You can stop severe bleeding in nearly any limb, you can get your fingers and hands wrapped around, with this method.

Whichever method you use continue the direct pressure, DO NOT peek to check if bleeding stopped; keep pushing down hard for at least 3-5 minutes, until bleeding stops, a tourniquet becomes available, or help arrives and emergency responders take over.

Also, if possible, elevate the limb by raising the injured arm or leg above the heart to help slow blood flow, ONLY if it doesn't cause more pain. This works well with the ‘clamshell’ technique.

Direct pressure is the primary way to control severe bleeding of the limbs, groin and shoulder regions, or when a tourniquet isn't needed or immediately available.

·       Apply steady, firm continuous, direct pressure directly onto the wound, with one or both hands.
·       Place gauze dressings or any clean cloth on or in the wound. If available use a hemostatic dressing, over the bleeding site. If no dressings are available, use your bare hands.
·       If blood soaks through, DO NOT remove saturated dressings, that just removes any clotting that might have started, keep adding more layers on top and keep pressing down on the wound.

To wrap up, if there is an accident first check to make sure the scene is safe. Then, if there is evidence of severe bleeding, immediately apply direct pressure to slow or stop the bleeding, while emergency help is called and supplies are gathered or prepared.

Don’t forget to come back next week and read “Severe Bleeding, STOP the Bleed – Tourniquets©”, where we will talk about using a premade or improvised tourniquet to stop severe bleeding that direct pressure cannot stop.

I hope that you enjoy learning from this resource! To help me to continue to provide valuable free content, please consider showing your appreciation by leaving a donation HERE. Thank you and Happy Trails!

I hope that you continue to enjoy The Woodsman’s Journal Online and look for me on YouTube at BandanaMan Productions for other related videos, HERE. Don’t forget to follow me on both The Woodsman’s Journal Online, HERE, and subscribe to BandanaMan Productions on YouTube. If you have questions, as always, feel free to leave a comment on either site. I announce new articles on Facebook at Eric Reynolds, on Instagram at bandanamanaproductions, and on VK at Eric Reynolds, so watch for me.

That is all for now, and as always, until next time, Happy Trails!

Disclaimer: All content and media on The Woodsman’s Journal Online is created and published for informational purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice and should not be relied on as health or personal advice. Use of the information on this site is AT YOUR OWN RISK, intended solely for self-help, in times of emergency, when medical help is not available, and does not create a doctor-patient relationship. Always get professional help if available.

Sources

American Red Cross; “Bleeding, Life-Threating External”, © [2025 The American Red Cross], https://www.redcross.org/take-a-class/resources/learn-first-aid/bleeding-life-threatening-external?srsltid=AfmBOoruukIMCkbnGCNWGd3QY5C2xHdip6lYe1NlsTuzRMF7j7trgnYI, accessed December 6, 2025

Shertz, Mike, MD; “Clamshell Direct Pressure: A Simple, Hands-On Hemorrhage Control Technique When Tourniquets Aren’t Available”, [©2025 Crisis Medicine], https://www.crisis-medicine.com/clamshell-direct-pressure/?srsltid=AfmBOopsv8B-c8iZd8We8JIfkUlBULjWi5-BfPjislJqLFPq5I-rUtHC, accessed December 13, 2025

Vuković, Diane; “How to Treat and Pack a Bullet Wound in the Wilderness”, September 11, 2023, https://www.primalsurvivor.net/treat-gunshot-wound/, accessed December 6, 2025

Sunday, December 7, 2025

Severe Bleeding and You©

Author’s note –I hope that you enjoy learning from this resource! To help me to continue to provide valuable free content, please consider showing your appreciation by leaving a donation HERE. Thank you and Happy Trails!

Severe bleeding either from a penetrating gunshot wound, a knife slash, an axe chop, or whatever, KILLS, and if you don’t STOP it fast, it can kill QUICKLY!

Sure, but ‘normal’ people don’t have to worry about getting shot or hurt so badly that severe, uncontrolled bleeding is a concern. Right?

Wrong! Let’s do the math, in 2017, CNN replicated an analysis by the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence, and found that 39,773 people died by gunshot wounds (source HERE) and since 60% of gun deaths are from suicide, that leaves 37% that are from accident or from violence, and this number includes the 1% of mass shootings (source HERE). This mean that in 2017, approximately 14,700 people died of gunshot wounds in the US. That’s about 40 people dying from bleeding or the other effects of gunshot wounds every day!

Exsanguination, bleeding out, a loss of blood greater than 40%, which for the average adult takes between three to five minutes, and is a major cause of death for penetrating trauma victims. Specific percentages vary from study to study, but some show that over 50% of penetrating injury deaths, which don’t affect the heart brain or other vital organs, are due to severe bleeding and its accompanying shock, hypothermia, and acidosis.

Many of these deaths could have been prevented if someone knew what to do to control the severe bleeding associated with wounds, in the minutes before EMS arrives. Just like we learn CPR and the Heimlich Maneuver, we need to add stopping severe bleeding to the required list of basic first aid skills that everyone needs to know.

What is Severe Bleeding

Volume or amount and the flow are two ways to tell if bleeding is severe.

Volume is the amount of blood present. Think about a soda pop-can. Bleeding may be life-threatening when the amount of blood is equal to about half of what a soda pop-can contains, 6 fluid ounces or 178 ml. In children or infants, bleeding may be severe at a much lower amount.

The size of a 6 fluid ounce puddle of blood, if the victim is bleeding on a non-porous, flat surface, like tile, linoleum, or glass, which allows the blood to spread out more thinly, covering a larger area, around 12 to 16 inches (30 to 40 cm) long or in diameter. This will make the volume seem more than it is. On porous absorbent surfaces, like carpet, fabric, or soil, the blood quickly soaks in, leading to a much smaller, more concentrated, and less spread-out appearance. This makes the volume seem less than it is.

Don’t forget to come back next week and read “Severe Bleeding and STOP the Bleed©”, where we will talk about what to do to stop severe bleeding.

That is all for now, and as always, until next time, Happy Trails!

Sources

Vuković, Diane; “How to Treat and Pack a Bullet Wound in the Wilderness”, September 11, 2023, https://www.primalsurvivor.net/treat-gunshot-wound/, accessed December 6, 2025

Sunday, November 16, 2025

Baby It’s Cold Outside...Put on Socks©

Author’s note -- I hope that you enjoy learning from this resource! To help me to continue to provide valuable free content, please consider showing your appreciation by leaving a donation HERE. Thank you and Happy Trails!

Have you heard the old wives’ tale that if you put on socks, you warm up immediately? Yah...well it’s not true, it’s more perception than reality, and here is why.

According to SINTEF research scientist, physiologist and low temperature expert Øystein Wiggen, “Heat loss is all about insulation and is greatest wherever the skin is exposed. So, in general, it’s not true that any given part of the body releases more heat than any other part. But our sensitivity varies. We experience the same external temperature entirely differently though our fingers than we do through our legs. Our fingers will always feel the coldest even though they are not. Having said that, it’s still a good idea to wear a hat to keep warm”.

There are five ways the human body loses heat to the environment, and heat loss is proportional to the amount of exposed surface area.

In cold environments your body reduces blood flow to your extremities through vasoconstriction, to preserve the heat of the bodies core, in effect shutting off the blood flow to your arms and hands, and your legs and feet. Studies have shown that just like with your head, your feet (or hands) lose body heat to the environment in a similar percentage to their total surface area.

Since your foot makes up only about 1.5% of your body’s surface area, on average, the total loss of body heat for both feet should be about 3%. So just like the old wives’ tale about losing 40-50% of your body heat through your head isn’t true, because the surface area of your head is only about 9 to 10% of your body’s total surface area, the tall tale that “putting on socks will warm you up immediately” is also untrue.

Even though your feet are not a major source of overall body heat loss, reduced blood flow can make your feet and hands feel cold and icy. Also both feet and hands have less muscles to generate heat, are often in direct contact with cold surfaces, and are more sensitive to the cold.

Additionally, in biological terms, your feet and hands have a higher surface area relative to the volume ratio compared to the core of the body. The surface area-to-volume ratio is crucial for heat exchange with the environment. As body parts get bigger, their volume increases faster than their surface area, this larger volume generates more heat, but the smaller surface area relative to the volume means less of this body heat is exposed to the environment to escape through radiation or convection.

This lower surface area relative to the volume ratio means less of the body's heat is exposed to the environment at any given time, allowing the larger part to retain heat more effectively. Conversely a small body part, like your feet and hands have a large amount of surface area relative to their volume. This higher surface area relative to the volume ratio means more of the body’s heat is exposed to the environment at any given time, allowing the smaller part to lose heat more effectively.

So to prevent that icy foot feeling, wear socks, ... oh and put a hat on!

That is all for now, and as always, until next time, Happy Trails!

Sources

Benjaminsen, Christina; “The cold hard facts about your body and low temperatures”, Jan 23, 2023, https://norwegianscitechnews.com/2023/01/the-cold-hard-facts-about-your-body-and-low-temperatures/, accessed November 15, 2025

Stuff; “Ask a Scientist: Feet Keeps Us Warm”, July 1, 2012, [© Stuff Digital Ltd], https://www.stuff.co.nz/science/7205016/Ask-a-scientist-Feet-keep-us-warm, accessed November 15, 2025

Sunday, November 9, 2025

Baby It’s Cold Outside...Wear a Hat©

Conventional wisdom is that you lose 40% to 50% of your body heat through your head, so wear a hat. Sometimes conventional wisdom is correct, but sometimes, like in this case, it is nothing but a wives’ tale!

We’ve all been brought up to believe that you lose more heat through your head than anywhere else, but it just isn’t true. The root of this myth appears to be experiments performed by the U.S. Military which exposed test subjects to frigid temperatures. The results of the experiment suggested that 40 to 45% of all body heat is lost through the head due to the experiment leaving the subjects heads exposed to the cold. The conclusions of this experiment were widely reported, and so the wives’ tale began and over time became common knowledge.

But the fact of the matter is that heat is lost from the body as a function of the amount of skin that is exposed to the cold, and the head makes up approximately 9% to 10% of your body’s surface area. According to Dr. Richard Ingebretsen, a wilderness medicine expert at the University of Utah School of Medicine, if your head really lost 45% of your body’s heat, then you would lose about 40 times as much heat from your head as any other part of your body. This is unlikely!

“The real reason we lose heat through our head is because most of the time when we’re outside in the cold, we’re clothed...if you don’t have a hat on, you lose heat through your head, just as you would lose heat through your legs if you were wearing shorts.” Dr. Richard Ingebretsen

According to Dr. Tyler Quinn, an assistant Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at WVU, your body regulates its temperature by moving blood throughout your body. The cold transfers through your skin by chilling the blood at skin surface, this chilled blood is then moved throughout the body where it is dispersed. A similar thing happens, in reverse when it is hot out.

Your head is highly vascularized, with large blood vessels close to the surface, so heat dispersal to the rest of the body can occur faster there than in less vascularized parts of your body. Also since there is less fat around your head, your face and head will be more sensitive to temperature changes than the rest of your body.

So wear a hat when you go out in the winter anyways, you’ll feel warmer.

Don’t forget to come back next week and read “Baby It’s Cold Outside...Put Socks On©”, where we will talk about the wives’ tale that if you put on socks, you warm up immediately.

That is all for now, and as always, until next time, Happy Trails!

Sources

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4667044/pdf/indhealth-53-533.pdf

Davis, Susan; “Do We Really Lose Most of Our Heat Through Our Heads?”, January 04, 2011, [© 2005 - 2024 WebMD LLC], https://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/features/do-we-really-lose-most-of-our-heat-through-our-heads, accessed November 8, 2025

Headquarters Department of the Army, Survival FM 3-05.70, May 2002, [Washington, DC, 17 May 2002 ], https://irp.fas.org/doddir/army/fm3-05-70.pdf, accessed November 8, 2025

Henrikson, Eric; “Do we really lose most of our body heat through our head?”, January 12, 2024, KXAN, https://www.kxan.com/news/science/do-we-really-lose-most-of-our-body-heat-through-our-head/#:~:text=This%20means%20you%20can%20feel,this%20part%20of%20the%20legend.&text=Copyright%202025%20Nexstar%20Media%20Inc,broadcast%2C%20rewritten%2C%20or%20redistributed, accessed November 8, 2025

Pan, Jefferson; “WVU professor explains how much heat is actually lost through the head”, January 9, 2025, WBOY, https://www.wboy.com/news/monongalia/wvu-professor-explains-how-much-heat-is-actually-lost-through-the-head/#:~:text=Quinn%20previously%20studied%20exercise%20physiology,yourself%20in%20cold%20temperatures%20here.&text=Copyright%202025%20Nexstar%20Media%20Inc,over%20the%20next%20few%20years?&text=What%20is%20your%20feedback, accessed November 8, 2025

Vreeman, Rachel C; and Carroll, Aaron E; “Festive medical myths More medical myths hit the dust”, BMJ, December 17, 2008, page 337, https://scholarworks.indianapolis.iu.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/1a1897df-5cf6-451e-ab06-d9127bf0b22a/content, accessed November 8, 2025

Sunday, November 2, 2025

It’s that time of the year and the white tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) are running, the bucks are rubbing trees and making scrapes. “But what does the deer see ... Ring-ding-ding-ding-dingeringeding!?”

What does the Deer See!?

Hunters used to think that white-tailed deer were colorblind, only seeing the world in shades of gray, but now researchers know that deer can see colors, just not in the same way as humans. So, what does the deer see and what does this mean for hunters and other visitors to the wild parts of North America?

Basically, rods in the retina provide coarse detail in low light situations and cones provide finer detail and color vision, containing photopigments that allow you to see the colors. The biggest difference between human and deer vision is the different number of rods, cones and the number of photopigments, pigments which convert light into color signals, found in their retinas.

Humans have trichromatic vision because their retinas contain three photopigments which allow us to see colors. The first is at the short wavelength of very dark blue-violet at 420 nm (nanometer), the second one at the moderate wavelength of green at the 530 nm range, and the third at the long wavelength of orange-red at 565 nm. Additionally, human eyes have more cones than deer eyes, while deer eyes have significantly more rods. And because of this, humans can see details and colors much more clearly than can a deer. But our lenses filter out almost all the available UV light, preventing us from seeing shorter wavelengths which are visible to many other animals, including deer.

The University of Georgia Deer Lab (UGA) has done much of the research on the white-tailed deer’s visual capabilities. They discovered that deer have dichromatic vision and that a deer’s retina only has two photopigments with just two peaks. The first one is at the short wavelength of dark blue at 450 nm, and the second at the moderate wavelength of green at 537 nm. And deer are 20 times more sensitive than humans are too blue. In fact, deer see blues much more vividly than a human sees red and can even see ultraviolet (UV) light between wavelengths of 300 nm and 400 nm. This is one reason deer can see so much better in low-light conditions than can humans. Also, unlike humans, deer’s eyes don’t have an ultraviolet filter that protects them from the Sun’s harmful rays. According to Dr. Gino D’Angelo, “The lens in a deer’s eye are perfectly clear, where ours are more like yellow shooting glasses that filter out some of that ultraviolet”.

All things on the Earth are exposed to UV light all day long, but this wavelength is overpowered by visible light. As the visible light begins to fade at the end of the day, the shorter UV wavelengths make up much of the remaining light. UV light is most abundant around sunrise and sunset, although it lingers deep into the night, and the moon and cosmic rays shed some all night long. Deer eyes have adapted to the low-light conditions of dawn and dusk when UV light is dominant, and this is when they can see their best and are most active.

What does it all mean?

Since deer’s eyes can’t see longer wavelength colors like red and orange, to a deer bright oranges and reds, look like muted grays and browns.

According to Blaise Newman at the University of Georgia Deer Lab (UGA), “Deer don’t see blaze orange the way that we do, but it’s not like you disappear. It can be very neutral, but if you don’t have some form of breakup you can look like a dark blob in the forest. So, if you can get blaze orange breakup, that’s always a good selection”.

Also, per Newman, “Deer are a prey species ... Having detailed discrimination isn’t really important to deer. They just need to be able to detect and escape something”. With a deer’s dichromatic vision limiting the number of colors that it can see, deer have less “chromatic noise”, and not having to process so many colors, allows their eyes to detect movement much more quickly and easily. Newman explains, “They see motion at an astounding rate compared to our own ability”.

To us deer vision might seem like a pale imitation of what we see, but that’s only because we’re seeing the world through our eyes. As omnivores and tool makers, we need to see in finer detail and to be able to recognize a wider range of colors.

But with a deer’s ability to see into the ultraviolet wavelengths, there are things that they can see that we cannot.

According to Daniel DeRose-Broeckert of the UGA, when viewed with a black light, fresh rubs glow more during the pre-rut, and fresh scrapes glow more during the rut, he explained that to deer “rubs look like highway reflectors ... When the rest of the woods are dark, the rubs and the urine in the scrapes are highlighted because it’s throwing a different color, a brighter color, than the light that’s contacting it”.

The reason for this is that when deer leave rubs on trees, the bark layers, saps and other plant parts photo-luminesce, and so do the secretions from a buck’s forehead gland. The wavelengths produced by the urine in the scrapes, according to DeRose-Broeckert, glow in the UV range “like spilled milk” or “spilled white paint”.

And now we know “what does the deer see!?”

That is all for now, and as always, until next time, Happy Trails!

Notes

Sources

Durkin, Patrick; “Buck Rubs Never Fail to Fascinate”, February 10, 2017, https://www.bowhunting.com/blog/2017/02/10/buck-rubs-never-fail-fascinate/, October 18, 2025

Honeycutt, Josh; “Learn How to Read Deer Rubs for Greater Success”, October 1, 2025, [©2025 Outdoor Sportsman Group], https://www.gameandfishmag.com/editorial/reading-rubs-scrapes-greater-success/536907, October 18, 2025

Infantry Journal, Psychology For The Fighting Man, [Penguin Books, Washington, 1945], page 62, https://archive.org/details/psychology-for-the-fighting-man/page/4/mode/2up, accessed November 1, 2025

Olesen, Jacob; “Eyes of the Forest: What Colors Can Deer See and How Is Their Vision?”, [© 2013-2025 Color Meanings], https://www.color-meanings.com/what-colors-can-deer-see-vision/, accessed November 1, 2025

“Buck Rub, Buck Scrape”, November 13, 2011, https://prairiegardentrust.org/buck-rub-buck-scrape/, October 18, 2025

Wikimedia, “Deer rub.jpg”, October 22, 2015, by Wasp32, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Deer_rub.jpg, October 18, 2025

About Me

I live near Buffalo, New York and have more than 25 years of experience in the outdoors. I enjoy being in the wilderness, paddling a canoe or exploring the woods, when I am not researching survival, woodcraft, camping skills or life on the Old Northwest Frontier of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. I am a published author and I have been a guide for Birchbark Expeditions and an Outdoor Skills trainer for the Boy Scouts since 2014. I am also a martial artist, having studied several different combat arts over the past 30 years. Currently, I am the author of The Woodsman’s Journal Online and BandanaMan Productions on YouTube.

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Sunday, December 14, 2025

Severe Bleeding, STOP the Bleed – Direct Pressure©

Sunday, December 7, 2025

Severe Bleeding and You©

Sunday, November 16, 2025

Baby It’s Cold Outside...Put on Socks©

Sunday, November 9, 2025

Baby It’s Cold Outside...Wear a Hat©

Sunday, November 2, 2025

Rubs, Scrapes and What Does The Deer See, Part Two©

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