LAST UPDATED: May 8th, 2015
As our hunting seasons draw to a close throughout the North American continent many of us will be further evaluating our safety gear choices. Each year it seems, we are always hearing news of another member of our hunting family needlessly falling to their untimely deaths from a failure to either wear or properly wear a safety harness.
At Bowhunting.Com we are committed to always promoting treestand safety. This begins the moment you begin your climb and ends only when you have fully descended down. Below, is a reminder for us all on the risks we take each fall. These risks can affect our families forever, so it is of utmost importance that you read below and understand the risks.
Let’s be safe while hunting and return to our loved ones with only the spoils of our hunt in 2011!
Dear Friends,
Most hunters mistakenly think you can safely hang in a full body harness if you fall from a treestand. If not done properly (with a suspension relief strap) you can die in as quickly as 5 minutes. Please read about suspension trauma and help us spread the word to other hunters.
Mountaineer Sports Warns Hunters Beware of Fatal Suspension Trauma
Dr. Norman Wood, owner of Mountaineer Sports and creator of the patented Rescue One Controlled Descent System,™ warns hunters to beware of potentially fatal effects from suspension trauma.
Dr. Wood explains the seriousness of suspension trauma. “When you are wearing a full body harness, and fall from your treestand, you will first be thankful that you’re not lying on the ground either dead or busted up. But, you only have a few minutes to get back to your feet. You can start feeling the effects of suspension trauma very quickly. Your body’s weight is pushing down on your leg straps so hard that it is causing a tourniquet affect on the large veins in your legs. This pressure stops the blood in the legs from returning back up to your heart,” explains Wood.
Within 5 to 30 minutes of hanging you can be in very serious trouble as Dr. Wood further describes. “The powerful heart can pump the arterial blood down into your legs, but the low pressure venous blood can’t get back up. And this is the bad news; this is called Blood Pooling and the legs can store up to half of your total blood volume. It is just like having a major blood loss of about half of your blood without it ever leaving the body. It is the same thing as cutting both of your wrists and losing half of your blood. The longer you hang in your harness, the less blood there is to circulate through the heart and lungs to keep you alive.”
According to Wood, “Everyone should always wear a full body safety harness whenever in a treestand. It can save your life. You should be connected to the tree from the time you leave the ground until the time you get back down. There are plenty of different harnesses with suspension relief straps available on the market today to keep you safe, and you should always be using them correctly as instructed.”
The Rescue One Controlled Descent System™ was invented by Dr. Wood to help hunters avoid suspension trauma and return safely to the ground. The system is Revolutionizing Fall Safety™ and has been certified to TMA Standards by an independent testing laboratory. For a video demonstration of the Rescue One CDS II™ and more information you can look for them on the web.
Be safe this year! Look into the many better choices companies like Mountaineer Sports or the good people at ScentBlocker have recently come out with. Check it out right here!
