Your version of a bad day
- Razor blades travel in fours. A broadhead finds your palm while you’re quartering by headlamp — surgical-sharp and deeper than it looks. Direct pressure without peeking is the whole skill, and you may be doing it one-handed by feel.
- Twenty feet is a mechanism. The strap lets go at the transition and you’re on your back under the stand — or hanging in the harness above it. Either way the spine questions come first, and “walk it off” isn’t one of them.
- The pack-out flips on you. Second load of elk out, base layers soaked, temperature dropping with the light. Hypothermia starts as clumsy and stupid — recognizing it in yourself, alone, is the hard version of this course.
Start here
All 15 lessons are worth your time, but this order front-loads what your world serves up:
- Bleeding & Wounds — broadheads and boning knives cut deeper than they look — pressure and packing, done right
- Spine Injuries — a treestand fall is the textbook high-energy mechanism
- Cold Injuries — the sweat-soaked pack-out is a hypothermia machine
- Evacuation — solo protocols: the plan you leave, the check-ins you keep, the hour someone starts looking
- Kits & Preparation — what earns its ounces in a bino harness and a kill kit
Then pressure-test it
Interactive scenarios — one decision at a time, tempting mistakes included, debrief at the end:
- Stop Peeking — deep laceration, pressure held — the broadhead drill
- The Guy Who’s Fine — a ground fall from stand height, and the vitals that argue
- The Burrito — wrap the cold hunter before cold becomes the emergency
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. No one checks a card at the trailhead in September, and hunter education barely touches this. If you work for an outfitter that requires a WFR, take that course — this is the fluency underneath it, free, in the offseason. If nobody requires you to hold a card, what you need are the skills, not the laminate.
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.