Try doing that with a decomposing body and see how far you get
I presume by short haul, you mean rescue basket or similar - no problem with that as long as the casualty can get themselves into it which means they must be conscious and relatively uninjured. For an injured casualty there is no substitute for putting a rescue swimmer or winchman into the water with them.
Nope, talking live bodies, dead ones can wait and be fished out with a net. Like I said, you do not always need a winch. We do lots of human cargo loads all day long on powerline work, and one of my former pilots does HEC rescues for Sonoma County SO in California.