Survivormanpected television could be so educational!
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Stay Calm, Stay Alive
Necessity really is the mother of invention. This is a lesson Jona
than Clement, a 13yearold Calgary teenager, learned the hard
way. Little did he know that when his father, Gerry, took him on his
first bowhunting trip, a freak accident would harm his dad—but
that Jonathan’s own quick thinking would save his father’s life.
Gerry and Jonathan had set out to explore the headwaters
of Oldman River in Alberta’s Rocky Mountains, but soon after
their adventure began, Jonathan accidentally launched an arrow
into his father’s leg. When Gerry looked down at his thigh, it was
spurting blood “like in a horror film. I knew [the arrow] had hit
an artery and I was in major trouble, but my little guy, almost
immediately, kicked into survival mode.”
Though Jonathan had inadvertently caused the injury, his
actions afterward demonstrated his steady resolve to set things
right. Upon seeing the fountain of blood, he instantly removed
one of his dad’s socks and created a makeshift tourniquet to
stem the flow. When asked how he’d known what to do, Jon
athan said he’d seen the technique on TV: “I knew because I
watched a show called , where a guy’s out in the
wilds for days.” I’m sure that Jonathan’s father had never sus
With the tourniquet in place, the young teen helped his father
walk back to their campsite, which was over a mile away. As relieved
as they were to get behind the wheel of their pickup truck, mis
fortune soon struck again. During their drive for help, the truck’s
undercarriage got stuck in the rocky terrain, and Jonathan and
Gerry were forced to make their way back to camp on foot. Gerry
was still losing a lot of blood, so his son carefully guided him back
to their site.
Soon after they arrived, Gerry fainted, hitting his head as
he fell. All the while, Jonathan remained calm, though he admits
he was worried about his father’s condition. “Once we got a fire
going, it was better,” the boy recalls. “My dad was pretty cold,
but I was okay.”
Psychological Aspects of Survival (^) | 49