Not sure this is the right place to post this, but thought someone here could answer the question.

I have a 300 Win Mag 26" barrel with a muzzle braek on it. At my home range 1100' above sea level, 60 degrees F, 50% humidity. This rifle is very loud and will ring your ears if shot without hearing protection.

Recently, I was hunting at 5000' above sea level, 60 degrees F, 10% humidity and the report from this rifle was no worse than any 30 caliber without a brake on it.

This has really puzzled me and I'm wondering why this would be?

I couldn't say anything from a physics perspective but I would bet it was the shooting conditions. Example would be my 338-378 Weatherby with the Accubrake... It seems the noise is a bit more pronounced at the range since it is covered and there is plenty of concrete... When I'm shooting in the open it seems a bit less loud...

Ken....

Concentration - you were concentrating on the game and how it would react and shut out the noise.

The noise is reduced while hunting, for the same reason that the recoil is reduced while hunting. IE it's your sense of perception that's different, not that the rifle is doing anything different.

Very true. I hunt with revolvers and if I forget to put my muffs on down on my range, a .44 will make my ears ring and hurt. But when shooting at a deer, even the .475 doesn't bother me at all. I shot at 2 deer one morning before I got used to the fast barrel rise and learned to not relax when hunting. I took a pile of hair off the top of both deer, no blood at all. However the reports rolled my neighbor and his girl friend right out of bed. I have to go back farther in the woods since I got chewed out. That spot is now reserved for archery only. Hee, I can still picture that!

Another factor is the sound reflecting off the shooting bench. The same problem shooting over a hood, the reflection from the windshield is really loud.
Good Luck!

I did a lot of shotgun patterning, a lot of different loads etc. on paper targets at 40 yards, like Oberfell and Thompson did in the sixties. And Brister as well. Well, shooting some 60 woodies on a sunny morning or ducks on a rainy evening did not harm me at all, but shooting on a paper target is real frustrating, I could not stand a single shot without ear protection...
It is between the ears, no doubt.
Nice day,
Jan

There are two physiological conditions at play during the hunting experience that are not present at the range: 1) tunnel vision ... our focus is so intense that we tend to shut off everything that is not important, and 2) auditory shutdown ... our attention to the senses that are relatively unimportant to the experience are dramatically reduced. Is esspecially true of hearing.

Same things happen in a gun fight. Has been well documented.

Guys I appreciate all the explanations. However, it is not my imagination/target concentration etc. This rifle is just not as loud where I was hunting. My PH even commented on how it was no worse than any other 30 caliber without a brake. I believe it has something to do with the environmental conditions and altitude, but I'm just not smart enough to confirm that.

As others have noted a rifle is noisier at the range for a variety of reasons, especially if you shoot from covered firing positions. Another less favorable possibility is that your hearing is being damaged each time you shoot without hearing protection. It doesn't sound as loud anymore because your ears can't hear it as well. Same goes for your PH, maybe more so, and even worse for the tracker bracing the shooting sticks.

In traveling from 1100 feet to 5000 feet your ears got stopped up. Chew gum next time and your loud muzzle blast will return.

quote:

Originally posted by Stonecreek:
In traveling from 1100 feet to 5000 feet your ears got stopped up. Chew gum next time and your loud muzzle blast will return.

+1

You are probably half deaf from the freaking Muzzle brake already.Keep shooting without hearing protection and soon the noise will no bother you at all!!!!

I think the big question is, how do all of you know how loud your guns are WITHOUT hearing protection?????

I would never, EVER even consider shooting a breaked 300 Win Mag without foam plugs and muffs - ESPECIALLY at the range. For that matter, unless it's a pellet gun, it doesn't matter what caliber - my ears are PLUGGED!!!

Am I REALLY the only one who takes hearing and eye protection seriously?????

Good lord............

Many, many years ago we did something illegal almost every week. We hunted rats at night, on and around the breakwall in Cleveland with .22's. Rifle and pistol. We shot hundreds of rats, some as big as cats. Not a single shot was ever heard. Being near the water took all of the report away. All that could be heard was the click of the hammer. It was great, we could rattle of shots and all there was to hear was click, click, click.
I would set a lantern on the rocks a distance from where we were fishing, put a piece of weiner next to it and just aim at the weiner. Soon a rat would dart out, all I had to do was squeeze the trigger.
So I would say, yes, depends on where you are.

quote:

Originally posted by duck911:

Am I REALLY the only one who takes hearing and eye protection seriously?????

No there's two of us!

I never shoot without ear protection except from a tree stand for deer. I can take one shot without a problem, maybe two. I tried the muffs that you can talk with but block the blast. I could not tell where the sound was coming from when something was walking around me. Maybe the expensive ones will allow you to find direction but the cheaper ones drove me nuts.
I can't plug my ears and hunt when all shots are close range with revolvers when deer can come from anywhere. I have to hear them. Other types of hunting can use muffs. A few shots a year is still safer then a chainsaw or loud lawnmower. Hearing will go the way of the dinosaur soon anyway if you listen to the cars with the huge speakers that can shake your truck from 100 feet. Ears won't be needed, feel the vibration baby! Those jerks can shoot anything right alongside of their heads. All thats needed is some rhythm added to the muzzle blast.

Some of you knuckle heads just don't read. I never said that I didn't wear ear protection. As a matter of fact I won't shoot any rifle at the range without it. It just so happened that I shot this 300 in Africa with ear plugs in and noticed that the report was not as loud as it was here at home on my rifle range. I had the oppurtunity to take an Oryx with a quick off hand shot and didn't have time to put my plugs in. At the shot I expected to have my ears ringing, but that was not the case and the report was no worse than a 270 or 30.06. I hunted for the rest of the trip without ear plugs, took several more animals and my hearing is no worse than it would be hunting whitetails here in the states. I'm 67 years old and have been shooting long before most of you were born. My hearing is still good and yes I wear ear and eye protection when at the range. You can believe what you want, but this rifle is not any where near as loud where I was hunting in Africa as it is here in the southern U.S.A.

quote:

Originally posted by Devildawg66:
Some of you knuckle heads just don't read.

It does look that way.

quote:

... this rifle is not any where near as loud where I was hunting in Africa as it is here in the southern U.S.A.

Time Zone Delay on the sound.

Semper Fi Devildawg66

The acoustic impedance of air is the density of air times the speed of sound in air.

http://www.physics.lsa.umich.edu/chupp/Physics290/Lecture18/tsld005.htm


As the air gets thinner, the density goes down and the impedance goes up.

In a vacuum there is no sound.
As the air gets closer to a vacuum, there gets to be closer to no sound.

[That much from my education. Now I will make the rest up.]

More importantly, the ear is designed to couple [impedance match] the air to the nerves.

When the impedance of the air changes, we increase the impedance mis match.

Really quite simple, at 5000 feet the air is less dense than at 1100 feet. Sounds travels less efficiently at the lower density. Think of the sound that whales make that carry for miles and miles underwater. Of course water is much more dense than air.

tnekkcc was trying to say this...

Hawkins nailed it. It all has to do with the surroundings. The sound waves are bouncing off of the surroundings.

I can do it here at 300' above sea level. For instance if you shoot the rifle in a covered building or right next to a house etc the sound is very loud. Take the same rifle out into the middle of a huge crop field of bare dirt and it will amaze you the difference in the sound.

If you want a real eye opener shoot the rifle in an open field and then walk into a small barn and shoot from well inside the barn

I pulled a dumb stunt several years ago, we were on a hunt and had no ear protection. We decided to check for zero and the best prop was inside an old barn. I shot a 7RM one time and that was all it took to break me from shooting inside a building w/o hearing protection, my ears rang for quite some time after that.

Good Luck

Reloader

quote:

Originally posted by bfrshooter:
...except from a tree stand for deer. I can take one shot without a problem, maybe two.

Oh dear now it's just me again

You might think that one or two shots won't affect you but they will.

It's worth getting the more expensive electronic plugs. It's not just hearing loss but tinnitus and pain. Most hunters at 65 would pay $50o - $1,000 for a cure for their hearing problems I reckon.

I always wear hearing muffs at the range. But, once I was caught with them around my neck when a buddy of mine fired off my 7mag with a brake. That's how I know how loud mine is under a covered shooting bench. But, I only heard it that one time.

Hunting withoug muffs, the blast is not as loud, partly because I'm in the open and sound is not reverberating back and also because I don't notice it as much when shooting at game.

I have taken a shot at the ranch in the wide open to check POI without muffs, and it's just as loud as at the range. Just to shoot it away from a hunting mode.

quote:

Originally posted by 1894mk2:
Concentration - you were concentrating on the game and how it would react and shut out the noise.

On several occasions, I have fired a rifle at game, and don't remember HEARING the shot at all! However, I do have the rcollection of seeing a bullet kick up dust on the mountainside beyond the target on one of these silent shots (after the bullet had gone through the game, a large mule deer)....

quote:

It doesn't sound as loud anymore because your ears can't hear it as well. Same goes for your PH, maybe more so, and even worse for the tracker bracing the shooting sticks.

Could be. Folks who knew him down in Texas said Finn Aagard was "deaf as a post".

For many years I only used protection at the range. I also have many times when I didn't hear the blast as I shot at an animal. However several years ago all that shooting started catching up with me.

I now always use protection at the range and in the field. If I needed to hear in the field then I would pay the extra $$$ to get the right ones.

As I'm getting ready to get fitted for my nice new hearing aids I sure wish I had been more careful in the past.

I notice the sound more when I hunt than when I shoot. Mainly because I always shoot with hearing protection. I've had my ear rung so many times when hunting. Just in the past year I can remember two times out of the 15 big game animals I took where my ears rang badly after the shot.

Reloader

quote:

Originally posted by Reloader:
Hawkins nailed it. It all has to do with the surroundings. The sound waves are bouncing off of the surroundings.

At the layman's level, Cohen's book has tables of "co-efficient of absorption" and gives a method that would quantify the difference between a concrete range vs grass and open sky.
http://www.amazon.com/Hi-Fi-Loudspeakers-Enclosures-Abr...-Cohen/dp/0810407213

At the electrical engineer senior level, the Kinsler and Frey book is much more comprehensive about acoustic calculations, but not for those afraid of e^jwt.
http://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Acoustics-Lawrence-E-Kinsler/dp/0471847895