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I always kind of took my hearing for granted. Sure, I’d stick some foam ear plugs in when I was shooting, but never thought about buying some decent hearing protection. Seemed like a waste of money. Then one day I was wearing a pair of foam plugs and had a shotgun get touched off too close to my ear. Now, first and foremost, I was angry about the discharge of a firearm in such close proximity to myself, but that came after the ringing in my head went away, which took a while.
So when I decided to look into better hearing protection, I was pleasantly surprised by the Howard Leight Impact Sport Earmuff. Why surprised? Because they were really comfortable, worked extremely well and cost a fraction of what I thought I was going to have to pay for such things.
The nitty gritty
The Impact Sport boasts a noise reduction rating of 22db. It amplifies low-level ambient sound such as your hunting buddies talking to you, or a flock of geese inbound to your spread, while instantly reducing potentially harmful sound such as gun shots and rap music. The padded stereo muffs are comfy yet stay on your head. You get a roughly 350-hour battery life from three AAA batteries which they are so nice to include, and the batteries are easily accessed through a snap-on battery compartment cover. If you forget to turn them off, there is a four-hour auto shut-off.
There are other cool features like the integrated power and volume knob, and an external audio plug for adding in tunes or other audio, like if you’re running a mic. They fold up for compact storage so there is no reason to not take them with you.
 They are also water resistant and pretty darn tough. How tough? Well I dropped a pair out of a gear bag in the middle of winter and didn’t know about it. I couldn’t find them until spring when I found them in the yard. Yes, they still worked. In fact, I picked them up and they turned right on. How cool is that?
The Outwrite Truth
These muffs are nicely priced at right around $60 a pair. At that price, I bought a set for everyone. It is extremely cool to me that I can now take my four-year old son out to the goose and duck blinds with me and not have to worry that the gunshot noise is going to scare him or hurt his ears. The Impact Sports are so comfortable and work so well, even a toddler will wear them all day!
If you take your kids hunting, you should really look into these muffs. I can think of no downfall to these muffs. Sure there are other muffs out these designed more for amplifying sounds, but that isn’t what I bought these for. They are very comfortable, have a low profile and are tough as nails. What’s not to like?
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