It is easy to tell when you have walked into a conversation among old hunters.

The most common words heard are “huh” and “what.”

Years ago hunters didn’t wear hearing protection. It wasn’t a case of making poor decisions. It was simply that viable hearing protection didn’t exist.

That isn’t the case these days. From headphones that can be worn in a deer blind to electronic earplugs that are appropriate for either hunting while sitting or walking, the next generation of hunters should hear things a lot clearer as they get older.

Being one of those hunters who grew up in Deaf Valley, I only recently started wearing ear protection. In all honesty it cost more than my first rifle and scope, but at the end of the day you can’t put a price on hearing. Trust me on this one. I have lived with a constant buzzing sound in my left ear for decades, and it started as a kid while hunting.

This year I have been using ETYMOTIC’s Gun Sport Pro model. It has been a love/hate relationship so far. Actually, my only complaint is not with the ear buds. It is with a small strap that holds the two together and helps you keep from losing them. The electronic ear plugs work great. Introduced about three years ago the GSP is one of three similar models made for industrial use, law enforcement/military and hunter/shooters.

The company itself got into ear protection in 1988 making hi-fi ear plugs for musicians.

Like other similar models on the market, the GSP has a multitude of functions, the most important being a blast protection mode that reduces noise at just over 65 decibels and at 90 decibels it goes into full protection mode. That is important to hunters because a muzzle blast from a rifle can range up to 170 decibels while a shotgun can top 150, more than enough to cause hearing loss if not immediately than over time. Hearing experts recommend protection for anything over 85 decibels.

Blast protection is the most important part of the GSP to hunters, but it is not the only feature. Another is an amplifier that increases other sounds. It doesn’t work like a Walker’s game ear, but it does mean hunters can wear hearing protection and still hear sounds in the woods or their hunting partner talk without having to remove them. That is something you don’t get with the more clunky head muffs or foam buds.

The GSP also has an acoustic damping property that helps keep sounds natural and helps block wind noise.

As for my complaint, most of the earplug models that are not molded for your ear come with a strap. It is a good thing because they are so small if one fell out in the field it would be lost forever.

However, as someone who often hunts with a dog I normally wear a lanyard with a whistle and another with a collar transmitter. During dove season every time I turned my head one of the lanyards would grab the strap and pull an ear plug out of my ear.

That won’t be problem deer hunting and it might be solved with a longer or shorter strap.

On a positive note, at the end of a day’s dove hunt I realized I had worn the ear plugs and never noticed them. I didn’t feel the fatigue that can come from blast after blast, my ears weren’t sore from wearing them.

A bigger test will come this winter when moving up from a 2 3/4-inch dove load shell to a 3- or 3 1/2