Quiz: Could You Survive a Bear Mauling?

Stopping the bleeding may not be as hard as you think because tears in the flesh like these tend to not bleed as much as sharp cuts. The blood vessels are damaged so badly they go into spasm, in some cases contracting so much that the bleeding is barely an ooze.

But there’s an exception: If a large artery is involved, the bleeding is likely to be bad. Arteries are deep within the body, but a bear claw or bite could definitely get to them.

Arteries spurt blood—depending on the size, sometimes a lot. Veins tend to ooze. Even if the oozing is profuse, direct pressure should stop the bleeding.

In our scenario, these claw wounds are large, so find something soft in your bag to wad up and cover the whole area as you apply pressure on it with your hand. The shirt you’re wearing would work fine, but if the temperature where you are is the least bit cold, I’d only use it as a last resort. Whatever you use, the cloth simply expands the area of pressure.

If you can’t stop the bleeding with pressure and you have QuikClot or Celox, this would be a great time to use it.

To clean the wounds, you can’t use the water you need to keep yourself hydrated, but if you have more or even can disinfect some from a nearby stream, wash the wounds out.

Never try to close such dirty wounds. There’s no way you’re going to get bite wounds really clean, so even if you could get the skin together enough to close them, you’d just be closing up bacteria that would result in a really bad infection.

Rather, clean the wounds with water up to two or three times a day, if you have it. Cover with bandages if you have them. But even if you don’t, don’t close a dirty wound.

Pure honey has great antibacterial and healing qualities. Of course, it could attract more animals, so use common sense when deciding whether or when to risk that. If you were able to find a cabin, for example, you might be OK because you’d have protection—unless and until you needed to venture outside.