I have been shooting almost all my life and over the past 10 years or more have noticed a very big problem with my hearing.  I also have a bad time with wax building up in my ears…I went to the doctor once and he dug out what he called “It looks like a boy”!  Of course he was joking, but the wax blob he pulled out was huge!  No wonder I couldn’t hear out of that ear.  I went to the doctor about a year ago with the same non hearing ear and he flushed it out with a high pressure washer and told me to take an aspirin and don’t bother coming back..(joking)…I could hear very well after that “soaking”.

Today I was looking at my emails and I’m on a mailing list for sports related discounts from highly reputable companies…maybe these items are seconds, but so what, if the price is right…right?  Check out the Camofire.com website sometime.

The item of the day that caught my eye this morning was the Walkers Game Ear Alpha Power Ear Muffs…Knowing nothing about them, I went to my world wide.  Well the power ear muffs are definitely something a shooter should look into for hearing protection,  they are designed to boost your hearing ability by 5 times but more importantly, they block out the noise caused by a sudden blast, like a shotgun or rifle going off.  Good stuff right there to help protect your hearing.

But the reason I’m writing about all of this is not what I found in the shooting sports arena, but more importantly for us hard of hearing people that are all over the world.  I have not investigated into a hearing aid for myself.  I watched my aging mother go through trials and tribulations trying to get fitted for hearing aids only to see them sitting on the counter not being used.  She spent thousands of dollars on those things and didn’t use them.

One of my older brothers now wears hearing aids and boy howdy did he ever need them…HUH?…and…SAY IT AGAIN!…was his favorite words…now he just turns off the unit when he doesn’t want to hear what you are saying.  But the best is, when he has it on, he just carries on a normal conversation and HUH and SAY IT AGAIN are not usually in that conversation.

I also have another good friend who wears a hearing aid and I won’t mention his name on here because I’m not sure he knows I know about it…His is a very discreetly hidden one and I must say it is one of the smallest and well hidden I’ve ever seen.

So, here I go investigating those hearing enhancing and noise muffling ear muffs and I come across other hearing devises made for the outdoor enthusiasts.  Since going turkey hunting a few weeks ago and having the Weasel tell me about sounds he is hearing and I never heard them, I have been thinking about something to assist me while hunting.  Of course affordability is always a concern with me and CHEAP fits my bill usually, but then quality is something to consider as well.  If I was to pick up something to help me hear those tip toe sounds in the woods I would insist on a high quality devise.  Looking on the internet is pretty much free and so here I went looking at the different ones.

I came across one called the “Walkers Game Ear Elite Digital HD Pro 2 Beige Assisted Listening Device”…a very long name for a game hearing devise, with no real way to make an acronym out of that made any sense………. (WGEEDHDP2BALD).  I got to reading about them and their sales writeup is very impressive…many settings for increased and decreased volumn…reduced wind noise…little to no “white noise” (whatever that is)…and an all around good devise for a medium price tag ($150 or so).  This little guy fits around the outside of the ear and the ear bud sticks into your ear channel to help you hear.  One size fits all.  It appears to be quite small and in the pictures of people wearing them they look comfortable and probably wouldn’t fall out.

So, I saw on one site where there were a ton of reviews and the average review rating was 4 out of 5…I clicked on there to read some of the reviews and what I found was amazing to me…Almost every review was from people with hearing issues buying them for every day use…not hearing the tippy toes noises out in the woods.  These people are city folks and country folks who just want to hear what is being said to them…one lady even put the review on because it was saving her marriage, buy her husband not having to have the TV up so loud.  Almost every review said that they had gone to a hearing doctor and spent thousands of dollars on expensive testing and hearing aids, revisiting and being counseled on “getting used to the extra noise” they were hearing etc. etc. but the main complaint was the cost…upwards of $8,000 in one case…and on top of that having to buy insurance to protect against losing the hearing aid.

When you look at doctors visits and spending that kind of cash for hearing aids, it sure makes spending $150 on one and getting the job done without all the extra problems associated with doctor visits and all the BS that goes with that.

Hey boys can’t you guys come up with $75 each to cover the expense of one of these for the old man?  Huh?  What did you say?  I can’t hear you!

Bears Butt

June 10, 2013