The Hearing Protection of the Future

EEPlugs, the Hearing Protection of the Future

I love outdoor sounds and one of my favorite sounds is the night sound of summer. The sound of crickets and cicadas in the distant woods soothes me like the sound of surf. It reminds me of pleasant evenings and mornings in the places I love the most. God is very good to me in that has blessed me with a permanent background sound track that will last me the rest of my life.

If that sounds confusing to you, I can understand. I have tinnitus, a constant sound in my ears that comes from loss of hearing and damage to my ears. Fortunately, mine sounds like something I love. For many people, its an unpleasant ringing or buzzing.

When I think of my hearing loss, I always think of a summer afternoon not much different than yesterdays. I had just purchased my first handgun. A 6" barreled Ruger Blackhawk in .357 Magnum. I walked out behind my Mom and Dads house into the edge of the woods impatient to try out the gun. I placed a couple of Coke cans on the base of a tree and stepped back several paces. As I cocked the hammer, I remembered I should have brought my ear muffs but I didn't want to walk back to the house. I fired off six rounds and my ears rang for a couple of days.

Since that time, I've been exposed to hundreds of thousands of firearm reports. There are 1,500 centerfire rifle shots fired in one sixty second period alone at Camp Perry during the National Matches. With seven relays in the National Trophy Individual Match, there are 52,500 shots fired on Viale range not counting alibis and refires. This is only one day of shooting. I attended Camp Perry 18 years and sometimes shot for two weeks. This doesn't include hundreds of days of practice on lesser ranges.

During that time, I wore various forms of ear protection. As a pistol shooter, I normally wore muffs, but when I started shooting rifle, the muffs contacted the stock and were in the way. I switched to ear plugs and probably used up a bushel basket of the disposable foam kind.

At the NRA Annual Meetings this year in Charlotte, I ran into Tim Sparks. Tim owns Tactical Hearing and he sells in the ear hearing protection that also enhances normal hearing. (I'm going to call them EEPlugs since they enhance electronically). The units I have look like hearing aids. They insert in my ears like hearing aids but they have little rubber tips that seal off the space between my ear canal and the EEPlugs.

The EEPlugs enhance my hearing like a hearing aid. They have multiple bands that can be adjusted to correct my hearing loss by amplifying the frequencies I can no longer hear. They give me the same result as hearing aids in daily wear. With them in, I can hear conversations I couldn't hear before, I can hear high pitched sounds, and my hearing is enhanced to the point I can now hear a squirrels toenails on bark like I could at age sixteen.

But theres more to what the EEPlugs do than that. When I experience loud noise thats above the 90db level that can damage hearing, the EEPlugs shut that noise down in microseconds so I experience the loud sound as if it were distant enough to do no damage. I hear it, but its not loud. This means I can shoot on the range and hear background conversations better than I could without the EEPlugs. If Im hunting, I can hear what other hunters are saying without worrying about further damaging my hearing when I, or others, shoot. When I give shooting instruction, I can clearly hear and understand what my student has to say. If I was still shooting team matches at Camp Perry, I could hear my coaches voice and my shooters voice when I was coaching, over the din of hundreds or rifle reports per minute.

The really wonderful part of this is that electronic hearing protection that enhances hearing is cheaper than hearing aids which don't protect the wearer from high pressure sound in spite of the fact that many of the EEPlugs are often made by hearing aid companies. Electronic hearing protection is not regulated by the FDA like hearing aids.

My Tactical Hearing Ultimas sell for $1,499 a pair. This sounds like a lot of money for ear plugs but remember that this is something I can use every day. They are comfortable, they increase my understanding of conversations, and they protect my ears when I shoot. I could spend $4,000 on a set of hearing aids that would cover the first two requirements but Id still have to take them out and wear plugs or leave them in and wear muffs when I shoot. I'm getting more function for less money than hearing aids.

The Tactical Hearing units I have arent the only electronic enhanced hearing protection on the market; there are several companies in this growing field. Many of the systems simply increase the sound without the ability to tune the sound to match the deficiency of the owners hearing and a few other companies make tunable units. To be able to hear as well as I could before I unwisely tried out my Blackhawk 40 years ago is like a miracle. Aint technology grand?

To see more about Tactical Hearing, go to: www.tacticalhearing.com