Over the years, we have shared with you everything that we have learned as we learned it, traveling three continents. And we have tried to put some science into the art of shooting moving targets.
The invention of several new MRIs has given science a better understanding of the neurological activity when someone does something. As a result, the science has evolved. As this evolution occurs, we have evolved and changed what we believe about how we teach and how it all happens.
The science of skill-building has evolved. The new knowledge about how the brain functions on conscious and unconscious levels has dramatically changed how and what we do when coaching shotgunning. The brain’s ability to multitask, do remarkable things with so little thought, and do them perfectly every time is simply amazing.
As science changes, so will our product and the way we understand it and deliver it. It would be such a boring thing just to keep saying the same old thing over and over. Even though we would get paid for it, the fact that we would be saying the same old thing to everyone we coach would take the fun out of it for us.
So in this epistle, we decided to share our most recent bit of scientific data and tell you about how it has changed our lives.
We are both wearing hearing aids. It was a quality of life decision that we are glad we made – and what a difference it has made in our lives. The audiologist was shocked at how little hearing we had actually lost. For people who are around loud noises as much as we have been in the last 30 years, to have hearing loss only 1 percent worse than the average person our age was shocking to us as well.
But we must tell you, in our years in skeet and then in sporting clays in 1983 (when it began here in the U.S.) we have always been anal about protecting our hearing. We have worn custom-fitted earplugs, first by Exxon Chemical and then by Tim Holt. Then we began the journey with Tim and Garry Gordon of EAR electronics when they began. Now we are backing those up with Pro Ears Predator Gold electronic muffs in cold weather.
When you combine the fact that we are around shooting more than any 20-30 active shooters you know combined, and we have so little hearing loss, the inevitable conclusion that can be drawn is that the hearing protection we use in the game today really has worked. And it will work for you, provided you will wear it.
We began using custom-molded plugs 40 years ago, and have been using the same electronic hearing protection for the last 30 or so years. And as it has gotten better, we have updated what we were wearing and will continue to update our equipment as it improves.
Hearing protection does work, but you gotta wear it!
What we weren’t ready for is the stigma that comes with wearing hearing aids, hence the title of this article. This stigma is deeply rooted in our minds from the first time we ever saw someone with a hearing aid, back in our first years of school. It looked like a hunk of metal on the back of someone’s ear. And the phrase “deaf and dumb” was repeated, which automatically associated the two with each other.
Now we are finding that this stigma is not the only reason people will not wear a hearing aid. We are sure vanity has something to do with it. And looking at it as a sign of aging, or something that old people have to do figures in there too.
The simple fact is that we age, our hearing gets worse and worse. But it gets worse at such a gradual slow pace, we can make up for it by leaning in and straining to hear conversations or turning the TV or radio up louder and louder! So, the fact that we can compensate for hearing loss takes some of the urgency out of solving the problem. But the problem will persist and the compensation will continue, simply because it is easier to not do something about it than to solve the problem.
The first hearing aids came out after World War II when returning soldiers had hearing loss from being around so much gunfire without hearing protection. While crude, the first hearing aids were awkward to wear. And along with the issuing of the hearing aids came a course in lip reading! To say that there have been advancements in hearing aids in the recent past would be an understatement. They are light, easy to install, and all-but-invisible. And the best thing is that they work. But we will get into that in the next issue.
What we did not know was the amount of stress we were putting on ourselves by trying to hear what was going on around us. That’s right, we said stress. Once we realized how much we were straining to hear, we began to realize what we were doing to compensate other than just turning the volume up!
Now that we can hear, we are no longer looking at people’s lips in an attempt to understand what they are saying. For the first time in a long time, we recognize their eye color and just how much emotion is transmitted through voice inflection and facial expression.
Last Fourth of July, we were at our bay house for several days and Gil decided to go without his hearing aids just to see what it was like to not be able to hear as well as we could with our hearing aids. Well, he lasted about 6 hours and could not take it anymore. It was then we both really realized how much stress is associated with trying to hear someone, especially with the background noise associated with a large gathering of people. He found himself saying “Huh?” time after time. And then it hit him – he was looking at people’s lips again!
Selling hearing enhancement is like selling hearing protection; it’s damn near impossible to get people to buy it or buy into the idea of protecting your hearing until it is too late. As we mentioned earlier, we have been anal about protecting our hearing, ever since we began building our passion for wing and clay shooting. And even to this day, when we are at the range we do not even touch our shotguns without first putting our hearing protection on and making sure it is working.
If you ever meet someone who thinks they do not need to protect their hearing, just buy them one round of skeet and give them only one of those little yellow foamy earplugs. After they shoot that round and take the earplug out, they’ll notice the difference. They will be convinced by, not only how much your hearing is affected by loud noise, but how much protection just that little foamy earplug can give!
Go to your audiologist and have your hearing tested to establish a baseline to reference your future hearing tests. And wear your hearing protection when at the range or hunting. Yes, wear it while hunting, too. You just might be amazed at what you can hear with the electronic hearing protection that is available in the market today.
Next month, we will talk about what pushed us over the edge and made us act to solve our hearing problems, and what we have discovered about the hearing enhancement market.
