Hearing Protection under Hats

I’ve scoured the internet looking for an answer and have an email out to Soundgear but curious if anyone has experience using sound enhancing hearing protection like Soundgear instafit, phantoms, or any of the other brands under a beanie hat. My experience with my instafits is the microphone rubs on the fabric and makes them unusable. Has anyone had luck with any other models where they don’t get feedback or noise from your hat fabric. Most of my use will be pheasant hunting so lots of head movement and I don’t like flat sound suppression (like a standard plug). I’d also be curious if anyone has experience with what I’ve heard to reffered to as ‘filtered’ earplugs that are just solid plugs that somehow filter out noises at certain frequencies or decibals but let standard sounds in.

I’ve worn hearing aids for the last 15 or so year s and before that I used the non-prescription “woods” ears and I never found a hearing assist of any kind that worked well under a cap, especially a stocking cap/

That was my fear. Was debating spending some HSA $s on nicer plugs. Probably still will since they’ll be better than what I have when I’m not wearing a stocking cap. The plus side is my stocking cap is pretty thick and I feel it muffles the sound to some degree, but may look into pairing that with the filtered non-electronic style plug.

I don’t have any experience yet. I am either going to try the Soundgear Phantoms or something similar from Alclair this fall.

You could wear full earmuff style ones over a hat. Wear the hat higher or push up over the ear cups. The ear cups will keep your ears from freezing off and the band will keep your hat on even though you aren’t wearing it right. Something like the Howard Leight Impact Sport has pretty thin cups and I don’t find they interfere with shooting.

Last year I went to the local ENT Dr and got custom hearing protection made that is specifically for hunting and they’re fricken awesome. The ENT takes a custom mold of your inner ear so you get an absolute perfect fit. They allow you to hear normal conversation (albeit at a slightly lower decibel than normal) and will cut out hearing ability anything over a certain decibel, so the gunshots/loud noises get blocked out and you can go right back to talking in a normal voice. They are not electronic and don’t have batteries. Not sure of the physics of how they work but man are they a godsend and only cost about $250 and two 5 min trips to the ENT. I wish I would have got them 10 years ago. Not only do I use them for hunting, sporting clays shooting, and any time I’m shooting guns, but I also use them on the lawn mower, weed wacking, chainsawing, etc.

Gitchi, would you post the brand and model # please?

Yeah please post any info you have on that Gitchi. I don’t need the sound enhancement so I’m fine with non electronic as long as it doesn’t muffle everything.

Reef I’ve looked a bit into the over ears. I may have to adapt my hunt style and get a pair for cold weather.

the plugs I got are Weston’s #39 passive shooter plugs. I got them custom molded to my ear at the ENT.

Thanks Gitchi. These were the ‘filtered’ type I was looking into as well. I’m tempted to give these a chance before grabbing another pair of electronic plugs.

Thanks Gitchi. I’ll give them a look!!

FinickyFish wrote:

Thanks Gitchi. These were the ‘filtered’ type I was looking into as well. I’m tempted to give these a chance before grabbing another pair of electronic plugs.

no problem. these would definitely have a good fit under a hat. I’ve been using them all summer dog training (lots of gunshots) and love them.