Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.
When I go wandering around the boonies, go fishing or hunting, or otherwise meander off the beaten path I usually take a small first aid kit with me. Since I have some time on my hands this week (the missus is off at a class for her work) I’m using the opportunity to restock, and perhaps upgrade, the first aid kits. First thing is to find a suitable container. I like softside containers because they’re easy to stuff into a pack, can be clipped to the outside of a pack with a carabiner, and are a bit more flexible to use than a solid container. The drawback, naturally, is that they do not offer the protection of a hardcase. However, the kits themselves are small enough that I can just drop one into a ziploc bag if I need to keep it waterproof (usually not that big a consideration since when its buried in my pack its pretty well protected from the elements). The case I’ve been using is this one from Maxpedition. It manages to hold the usual assortment of gauze pads, bandaids, tape, antibiotic cream, rolled gauze, pain relievers and still have room for an Israeli combat dressing and one of these nifty Trauma Pak kits. And, since one is none, two is one, and three is two (I guess) I put together several identical ones. And, just to be weird, each one is a different color.
Maxpedition actually makes a couple of pouches/organizers suitable for this sort of thing. The main one that I use is this one. It’s nice, but a bit on the bulky side. It holds a decent amount of gear, although it is definitely designed more for ’serious’ injuries rather than your usual simple first aid. I say that because the most easily accessible parts are the parts designed to hold large objects like rolls of gauze, compress bandages, etc, while the small things like bandaids, antiseptic wipes and small stuff like that is in a fairly tough-to-access pocket. However, I’m of the opinion that if your injury can be fixed with Bactine and a bandaid then, well, youre not really injured. Im more concerned with the stuff thats going to take stitches, Dermabond or staple gun to fix.
By the way, that FR-1 pouch has a band of velcro for attachment of name tags, etc. I picked up a blood type patch and a first aid cross patch to put on it. I got them here. These guys have an excellent selection of those sorts of things and the quality is quite good. (And, yes, I did get this one for the BioWeapon.)
The three kits that you see at the begininng of this post will wind up being the ‘extra’ ones kept around. You know, the ones for when your heading out the door to go fishing and you think “Hmmm…I better grab a first aid kit just in case…”. I expect they’ll get bounced around and used for roadtrips, range trips, dog adventures and the other episodes where I (or the missus) are not normally carrying my Bag O’ Tricks which already has a kit in it. And, as we say, one is none etc, etc, etc.
I’m sure someone will ask in comments what the contents of the kits are. Its one of those things that Im just not really going to get into because no matter what I list someone will chime in with “But, you really should have this…” and before you know it you’ve turned a fairly compact package into something the size of briefcase loaded down with all sorts of things. First aid kits and bugout bags, man….two things that no matter how you put them together someone will always say youre doing it wrong because you dont have [item] in it.
