americanhunter.org ❘ 63 ❘ august 2019
I
remember riding the bus home from
junior high school with a friend who
lived in the country. With nobody
home, we snuck out his dad’s junk .22
snub-nose revolver and went to their
dump down by the little stream that
runs through their property. We spent
the afternoon shooting at bottles. It was
probably the first permanent damage I
did to my hearing by shooting. Fifty-plus
years later, I remember how loud that
revolver was and how my ears rang for
days. They are still ringing.
The next time, we snatched some of
his mom’s cigarettes and put the filters
in our ears.
My buddies and I spent every
moment we could hunting and shoot-ing and never gave a thought to hearing
protection. A few years later we were
listening to loud rock music and driving
loud cars and motorcycles. My hearing
paid a price. I suspect many baby boom-
ers can relate.
None of the adults I knew back then
wore ear protection when shooting. My
grandfather owned the only shooting
range in our little town; the weekend
before deer season opened half the town
showed up to check their rifles, but I
can’t recall ever seeing any sort of ear
protection.
It wasn’t until I suffered a severe
ear injury in my early 20s that I bought
shooting muffs and started to protect my
hearing at the range, but wearing protec-
tion while hunting has not always been
the case.
A day in a duck blind has left me with
ringing ears. I have lost count of how
many times some fool has shot close
to me without warning. I once made
the mistake of shooting a .44 Magnum
handgun at a deer without wearing hear-
ing protection. I only had to shoot a rifle
with a muzzle brake a few times before
deciding to remove brakes from most
of my hunting rifles. Even with hearingprotection in place, years of competi-
tion shooting have taken their toll. Plus,
I have suffered several ear infections as
a kid and as an adult.
Without shooting, modern living
still steals your hearing. Loud music,
city noise, concerts, movies, airplanes,
lawn mowers, even a vacuum cleaner—
they all cause permanent damage. Time
is also a factor, as aging steals our hear-
ing as well.
These are just a few examples of how
a lifetime of shooting, hunting and life in
general may damage hearing. Like many
of my generation, I had a lot of fun get-
ting to this point, but knowing what I
know now, I would have done it much
differently.How We Hear
Sound is measured in units called deci-
bels. Permanent hearing loss occurs
when our ears are exposed to continu-
ous noise above 85 decibels or impulse
noise above 140 decibels. The louder the
sound, the more damage it creates.
A rock concert can reach 120 deci-
bels. At that level, hearing loss can occur
after less than two minutes of exposure.
Hearing loss is cumulative. While the
loss is small each time we are exposed
to noise like shooting a gun or mowing
the lawn, it is permanent and each event
adds to a cumulative total.
Normal conversation measures
approximately 60 decibels; heavy city
traffic is about 85 decibels; a lawn mower
is 110 decibels; a chainsaw 120; a vacuum
cleaner 100. Fireworks are 150-170 deci-
bels. A gunshot might be as loud as 170
decibels. The loudest sound on Earth
was likely the Tunguska meteor, a mas-
sive explosion that occurred near the
Podkamennaya Tunguska River in what
is now Krasnoyarsk Krai, in Russia, at
7:40 a.m. on June 30, 1908. It was greater
than 300 decibels. That’s loud enough to
make your head explode. Even if you are
wearing earplugs.Hearing works in humans because of
a series of events that changes sound-
waves in the air into electrical signals,
which the auditory nerve then carries to
the brain.
Soundwaves enter the outer ear and
travel through the ear canal, which leads
to the eardrum. The eardrum vibrates
from the soundwaves and sends these
vibrations to three tiny bones in the
middle ear called the malleus, incus and
stapes. The bones amplify the sound
vibrations and send them to the inner
ear, called the cochlea. The cochlea
is shaped like a snail and is filled with
fluid. An elastic membrane called the
basilar membrane runs through the
cochlea. The sound vibrations cause the
fluid inside the cochlea to ripple, and a
traveling wave forms along the basilar
membrane. There are hair cells, which
are sensory cells, on top of the mem-
brane. They move with the waves. As the
hair cells move up and down, their bris-
tly structures bump against an overlying
membrane and tilt to one side. This tilt-
ing action causes channels on the surface
of the bristles to open, allowing specific
chemicals to enter, creating an electri-
cal signal. The auditory nerve carries
this electrical signal to the brain, which
translates it into a “sound.” It’s pretty
amazing stuff and I think it must have
been one heck of an engineer who fig-
ured out how to build the system.
The hair cells near the base of the
cochlea detect higher-pitched sounds,
while those nearer the apex or center
detect lower-pitched sounds. Exposure
to loud sounds causes damage to those
hair cells as well as to the auditory nerve.
The hair cells at the base are closer to the
source of the noise and more susceptible
to damage, so the result from noise-
induced damage is a hearing loss in the
higher frequencies. That’s why our hear-
ing test charts often start out fine, but
drop off as the frequency grows higher.
This type of hearing loss may be
accompanied by tinnitus, a ringing,
buzzing or roaring in the ears or head. (I
am listening to it as I type these words.)
High-frequency hearing loss causes
trouble hearing consonant sounds and,
as a result, speech sounds become
distorted or muffled and difficult to
understand. That’s why we shooters and
hunters love to shout, “WHAT?”People think old hunters
and shooters are anti-social
... mostly we just can't hear.
Photo: Lee Thomas Kjos / TheRawSpirit.com