Deer Hunting and Hearing Loss: Will It Hurt Your Workers’ Comp Claim?

Why Insurers Bring Up Hunting

Hearing loss claims rarely get fought over whether you can hear, and the audiogram settles that. The fight is almost always over why because when an insurer looks for another cause, a hunting license is one of the first things it reaches for, and it makes sense from their side.

Gunfire is loud, and everyone knows it. So, if an adjuster can point to decades of opening days, target practice, and duck blinds, they can argue your hearing loss came from the woods and not the plant floor. It’s the same move they make with age, woodworking, loud music, or the snowblower in the driveway.

Insurers may point to things like:

• Years of deer, duck, or pheasant hunting
• Target shooting and sighting in rifles
• Trap and skeet shooting
• Past military service with weapons training
• Other noisy hobbies like chainsaws, motorcycles, or power tools

None of that means the claim is over. It just means the question of cause is going to get a close look.

How Loud a Deer Rifle Really Is

There’s no point pretending gunfire is harmless because we all know that it isn’t. A single shot from a hunting rifle or shotgun can hit somewhere around 140 to 175 decibels, depending on the gun and the load. That’s far past the point where damage can happen in an instant. One unprotected shot close to the ear can leave you with ringing that lasts a day or in some cases even longer.

But here’s the thing that matters for a claim. Most deer hunters don’t fire all that many rounds in a season. A few shots to sight in, maybe one or two at a buck, and that’s opening weekend. Compare that to a full shift beside a paper machine, a crusher, or a punch press eight hours a day, five days a week, for thirty years. Those are very different kinds of exposure, and a good audiologist knows it.

Understanding the Science Behind Noise-Induced Hearing Loss

What Gunshot Damage Looks Like on a Hearing Test

Hearing damage leaves a fingerprint. That’s why the audiogram is so important when an insurer blames your hunting because gunfire often hurts one ear more than the other. When you shoulder a rifle, one ear sits closer to the muzzle while the other is partly shielded by your head and the stock. For a right-handed shooter, that’s usually the left ear taking more of the blast. So hunting damage tends to show up lopsided.

Steady workplace noise usually looks different. It hits both ears from all around you, shift after shift, so the loss often shows up fairly even on both sides. It also tends to carve a dip in the higher pitches, right in the range where speech sounds like “s” and “f” live. An audiologist can look at those patterns and give an opinion on what most likely did the damage.

That doesn’t mean every case is clean. Plenty of people have some of both. But the test results, read by someone who knows what to look for, can tell a much fuller story than “he hunts, so it’s the guns.”

Find a Hearing Aid Professional

Hunting Doesn’t Cancel Out Years of Work Noise

This is the part a lot of workers don’t know. In Wisconsin, your job doesn’t have to be the only cause of your hearing loss. It only has to have contributed, so even if hunting played some role, that doesn’t erase decades on a loud job.

If you spent a career in a mill, a foundry, a quarry, or a shop full of machines, that noise still counts. Insurers may argue about how much of the loss belongs to work and how much belongs to something else. That’s a real argument, and it can affect a claim, but it’s an argument about the details, not a reason the whole claim disappears.

And don’t forget that the rules at work were often looser than they are now, because plenty of Wisconsin workers spent their early years with no hearing protection at all. That history matters too.

Be Upfront About Your Hunting History

Some people think the smart move is to leave hunting out when they talk to an audiologist or fill out a claim. It isn’t. Hiding it usually backfires.

Insurers often find this stuff anyway by checking hunting licenses, old photos, a comment to a doctor years ago. If it comes out later, it can make the rest of what you said look shaky, and that’s a much bigger problem than the hunting ever was. It’s usually better to be straight about it from the start and let the medical evidence do its job.

It helps to be ready to describe:

• How many years you’ve hunted and how often you go
• Roughly how many rounds you fire in a typical season
• Whether you’re right- or left-handed when you shoot
• Whether you’ve used earplugs or muffs while hunting
• Any target shooting, trap, or skeet outside of hunting

Being honest about all this gives your audiologist and your attorney the full picture. And a full picture is usually what a claim needs.

What to Do When Your Hearing Loss Claim Is Denied in Wisconsin?

Workers’ Compensation for Hearing Loss in Wisconsin

Wisconsin’s workers’ compensation law may provide benefits when noisy work caused or contributed to your hearing loss. That’s true whether or not you hunt. The claim depends on your work history, hearing tests, medical evidence, and the details of your situation.

Depending on the claim, benefits may help cover hearing aids, related medical costs, and compensation for permanent loss. Hearing loss that builds up from noise on the job is treated as an occupational disease in Wisconsin, and the loss doesn’t have to be total to count. Even a partial, work-related loss can carry a claim.

If you’ve got tinnitus too, mention it. Ringing in the ears can come from work noise just like hearing loss can, and it’s part of the picture.

Do I Qualify?

Protect Your Hearing This Season

October is National Protect Your Hearing Month, and the timing couldn’t be better with gun season right around the corner. Whatever’s already happened to your hearing, you can keep it from getting worse by using electronic earmuffs, which are a good fit for hunters. They let you hear a deer stepping through the leaves or a buddy whispering, then shut down the moment a shot goes off. Foam earplugs work too, and they’re cheap enough to keep a handful in every jacket. Even a single plug in the ear closest to the muzzle is better than nothing.

• Wear protection when sighting in, not just on opening day
• Keep plugs in when others are shooting nearby
• Use electronic muffs if you want to hear game and still protect your ears
• Get your hearing checked if you notice new ringing after the season

Protecting your ears now doesn’t hurt a claim. It just protects the hearing you’ve got left.

Understanding Tinnitus as a Work-Related Injury: What Workers Need to Know

What Workers Can Do Next

If you worked a loud Wisconsin job, you hunt, and your hearing isn’t what it used to be, a few simple steps can help:

• Get your hearing tested by an audiologist
• List your jobs, worksites, and rough dates of employment
• Note which machines or areas at work were the loudest
• Write down your hunting and shooting history honestly
• Gather any past hearing tests from work, a union, or your doctor
• Ask questions, because a hunting hobby doesn’t automatically rule out a claim

Deer camp is a big part of life here, and nobody should feel they have to choose between the tradition and their rights. If your job helped take your hearing, that still matters. Finding out where you stand is usually the best first step.

Sources:

• CDC/NIOSH: Noise-Induced Hearing Loss
• NIDCD: Noise-Induced Hearing Loss and Protecting Your Hearing
• American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA): Recreational Firearm Noise Exposure
• Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources: 2026 Deer Season Dates
• Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development: Workers’ Compensation Occupational Disease Provisions