North American Rescue CAT Gen 7 Tourniquet
The Combat Application Tourniquet has been the official tourniquet of the U.S. Army since 2005. Gen 7 adds Red Tip Technology for one-handed application and a reinforced windlass stabilization plate. At 2.7 ounces, there's no excuse for not having one in every ranch kit.
- Material
- Reinforced webbing; aluminum windlass; polymer buckle
- Dimensions
- 37.5" open length; 1.5" strap width; 6.5" x 2.4" x 1.5" packaged
- Weight
- 2 oz
- SKU
- WTP-GIFT-NAR-CATG7
The CAT tourniquet was developed in the early 2000s specifically because improvised tourniquets were killing people. Studies from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan found that soldiers who applied a proper tourniquet within the first two minutes of an arterial bleed had dramatically better survival odds than those who used belts, rope, or field improvisation. North American Rescue’s CAT became the Army’s standard in 2005. The Gen 7 is the current iteration: a single routing buckle, a free-moving internal band that distributes pressure across the limb rather than concentrating it, and the Red Tip Technology tab that gives a visual guide for one-handed self-application. Weight is 2.7 ounces. You will not notice it in a kit bag.
Ranch work produces exactly the kind of injuries a tourniquet addresses: caught in machinery, kicked by a horse, fence wire, power tools, augers. None of that is predictable, and help on a remote ranch can be 45 minutes to an hour away. The $30 price is not a rounding error. That’s the actual street price for the genuine NAR product — there are cheap knockoffs on the market that look identical but use inferior webbing and windlass components. Buy the genuine article from NAR or an authorized distributor, verify the item number (30-0001-s), and check the packaging for the NAR logo. If a deal looks too good, it’s a fake.
Buy two. One for the truck, one for the house kit or the barn. The Stop the Bleed campaign, which trains civilians on tourniquet use and wound packing, offers free courses through hospitals and fire departments across Wyoming and the Mountain West. The training takes 90 minutes. For more on building a complete working ranch first aid kit, see the full guide at Working Ranch First Aid Kit.