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Why don’t you hunt with ear protection? Prevent “hunters’ ear” with custom-fit, in-ear electronic hearing protection and enhancement for a lifetime of safe shooting
Do you hunt with hearing protection? A keen sense of hearing is an important asset for hunters. The name of the game is silence so that the hunter clearly hears a crisp crunch of leaves from a deer coming from behind or the snort of a elk hiding in the brush.
Imagine being on a deer or elk hunt and relying solely on the other four senses of sight, smell, taste and touch. Without using proper hearing protection, over time, those remaining four senses may be all you have left to take down your trophy.
Noise-induced hearing loss begins at 85 decibels of sound. A small .22-caliber rifle produces around 140 decibels. Big-bore rifles and pistols can create noise greater than 175. At that level of sound, the fine hairs in your ears that are responsible for stimulating auditory nerve fibers are permanently destroyed. 
This hearing damage can occur with as little as a single shot. In other words, listening out for a quiet rustling in the woods can quickly become a much more strenuous task.
A study conducted by the University of Wisconsin revealed that, of the 3,753 hunters and shooters observed, “38 percent of the target shooters and 95 percent of the hunters reported never wearing hearing protection while shooting in the past year,” and the risk of hearing loss increased by 7 percent for every 5 years someone hunted. With many hunters spending a lifetime perfecting their sport, without adequate hearing protection, their skills actually decrease the more they shoot.
According to Electronic Shooters Protection (ESP), “Homer wrote in The Odyssey of sailors using wax earplugs, allowing them to avoid the calls of the Siren song. The Siren being a myth, it is widely unknown in what capacity exactly ear plugs were actually used as far back as 700BC.” While noise-induced hearing damage is not a new problem, there are many new solutions that came with the growth of technology over the past 100 years.
Conventional forms of in-ear hearing protection like silicone plugs, while they can protect your ears from noise damage, bring their own set of problems that make them less than ideal for a hunter. They may protect your ears, but they also block out the sounds a hunter relies on to track and locate game.
That leads to hunters fiddling with their ear plugs, having to take them in and out of their ears throughout the hunt, which can be time-consuming and distracting in an intense moment when the hunter needs to focus and move quickly.
The most optimal form of hearing protection for hunters, then, is those that allow for both enhancement and protection simultaneously while remaining comfortable and secure in your ears. The advanced technology used to design and develop custom-molded, in-ear electronic hearing protection eliminates the distracting aspect of conventional options.
With numerous settings allowing you to select the degree you want to pick up on background noise versus drown out loud, foreground and wind noise, the most advanced hearing protection actually employs an omnidirectional microphone. The microphone allows you to pick up, auto-calibrate and place noises all around you while canceling out those dangerous and distracting decibels. ESP also uses waterproof nano coating technology to prevent moisture damage to the intricate internal electronics, microphone, speaker, volume control and battery contacts of the devices.
Damage to your hearing is irreversible, but it is also preventable. With the resources modern technology affords to help prevent “hunters’ ear,” and with custom-fit hunting hearing enhancement and protection, lifelong hunters can hear that trophy buck snort or those leaves crunch like it is their first hunt.
