For hunters, protecting your hearing is no joke

THROUGH A

DECOY’S E

YE

CHUCK K

OLAR LOCAL OUTDOORSMAN

Next weekend will be the first weekend of Game Fair over by the Twin Cities. In three weeks there will be a large hunting show centering on waterfowl at the EAA grounds. And, a couple weeks after that, a sports show centering on deer hunting will be held at the Chippewa County Fairgrounds.

Ammunition is starting to be a little easier to find. The first big game hunts of the year in North America will start before the end of the month, and several kick off in September.

This means hunters need to start sighting in rifles or just checking their trueness from the season before. A lot of hunters will want to shoot a round or two, of play some type of clays game to get ready for waterfowl and upland game.

Archers will be slinging arrows. But today we will talk about firearms shooting.

I remember the day a friend told me that they tested his hearing at work. He found out that he better be able “to see them coming” when he hunts deer, because he had extreme hearing loss due to noise exposure.

Target shooting wasn’t the primary cause in his case, but he never did wear hearing protection when he sighted in his rifles.

Every year, I see someone at a range shooting without hearing protection. Sometimes it’s more than one, and they’re often associated with a bachelor’s party at a sporting clays range. Go figure. I’m sure no alcohol is involved.

Shooting a round of sporting clays at a range could damage your hearing, and can actually be measured by an audiologist. Sometimes they are older shooters, but they all just figure they are “tough” and don’t need that hearing protection stuff.

Any noise level above 120 decibels can cause immediate hearing damage. OSHA lists anything over 140 decibels in a single event as needing hearing protection. To give you an idea, a simple .22 caliber rifle is about 140 decibels.

A shotgun sounds off at 150 decibels, and a big bore rifle at about 160 decibels. Rifles with muzzle brakes will reach even higher levels, and shooting in any enclosed or partially enclosed structures records much higher decibels as well – think shooting shelters. Hearing protection, whether ear muffs or ear plugs, are a must when shooting to sight in or just plain old shooting. If you don’t wear hearing protection, plan on needing to “see them coming” at some point in your life. A well-known celebrity hunter has been very vocal about sustaining hearing loss almost 40 years ago, just out of high school, while working in a mill. He didn’t work there long, but he left a lot of his hearing on the floor of a place he worked at, and he most likely didn’t get paid anywhere near enough to make that sacrifi ce. Forty years of constant ear ringing. Lawn mowers run at about 85 decibels and will cause hearing damage after two hours of mowing. Chainsaws can run at about 110 decibels and can cause hearing damage if operated at that decibel level for two minutes. We just finished fireworks season and that can also cause hearing damage. Firecrackers sound off at about 140 to 150 decibels.

When I was a kid, no one wore any type of protection for much of anything. That was just something “those a-holes from OSHA down in Milwaukee made up to justify their salary.”

Today, just to cut off a low hanging limb on a tree, guys are wearing whole suits of chaps, jackets, gloves, and bumper hats with attached hearing and eye shields – in July. Somewhere along the way that look became popular. Never mind if you fell a tree right onto a house; if you had the safety gear on, you looked like a professional, I guess. The same applies at the gun range.

Safety is that ounce of prevention. If we don’t do it we will lose most of our hearing at some point. Never mind the jokes about higher frequencies — like some females higher pitched voices being the first thing that is harder to hear by old married guys. Sure they’re funny. But missing the buck of a lifetime because “you couldn’t hear it coming” only has a moral of the story. And something else that isn’t funny: when you get to that point, earplugs cost a lot less then hearing aids.

“Huh? What did you say?”