⏱️ Estimated reading time: 16 min
Key Takeaways
Gundog hearing protection is one of those subjects that splits a shooting lodge down the middle. One handler on a UK gundog forum pointed out that spaniels “still hear a packet of sausages being opened at 100 paces”, while another admitted that if her dog is at distance and she has not got the whistle, there is “no chance of her hearing me call her”. Both can be true of the same dog, because noise damage is gradual and tends to take the higher, finer sounds first.
At BOLLSEN we are a family-owned hearing protection company, founded in 2016 and trusted by 1,000,000+ people, and our work on dog hearing protection started with the same question every Gun eventually asks. Do working dogs need it, and if so, when? The answer depends less on the dog than on where it stands, so this guide works through the noise itself, the evidence from working dogs, the roles on a shoot day and the season calendar. Throughout, we use ear muffs, called ear defenders in the UK, to mean over-ear protection that sits on the outside of the dog’s head.
Do gundogs need hearing protection when shooting?
A gundog that sits near the line on a driven shoot, waits in a wildfowling hide or attends regular clay and training days hears hundreds of shots across a season, and veterinary authors who documented noise-induced hearing loss in working dogs advise handlers to watch proximity and consider hearing protection.
That advice comes from a 2019 case series in Topics in Companion Animal Medicine, which followed three working dogs, one of them a gundog, and confirmed bilateral sensorineural deafness on BAER testing. In one of the three the loss was permanent. The authors concluded that handlers “should be aware of a dog’s proximity to gunfire and potentially consider hearing protection”, which is a measured recommendation rather than an alarm bell.
Not every working dog needs muffs every day. A beater’s spaniel working cover well in front of the Guns faces a very different exposure from a Labrador sitting at the peg through six drives, and the rest of this guide is about telling those situations apart.
Why is a gunshot different from other loud noise?
A gunshot is an impulse noise, a pressure peak that rises and falls within a few thousandths of a second, whereas an SNR rating is measured with steady continuous noise, so the number printed on any ear muff describes a hoover, an engine or a generator far better than it describes a shot.
The ear’s own defence, the acoustic reflex, tightens two tiny muscles in the middle ear, but it needs tens of milliseconds to engage and a shot’s peak has already arrived by then. For adult humans, the US National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health sets 140 dB peak as the ceiling for a single impulse sound. Almost every firearm reviewed by the National Hearing Conservation Association reaches or exceeds that ceiling, and even a small .22 rifle comes close to it.
That is why we never quote a reduction figure next to gunfire anywhere on this page. The frequency-by-frequency picture of how much noise dog ear muffs reduce belongs with continuous sounds like thunder, fireworks and the vacuum cleaner, where the published numbers genuinely apply.
Gunfire is the loudest thing most working dogs meet, and no ear protection takes it out completely. BOLLSEN Dog+ cuts a large amount of it, at the moment it matters most, across a whole season of it. Wearing muffs near the line is still much better than not wearing them, because the ear keeps that difference on every drive of every shoot day.
Can a season of shooting damage a dog’s hearing?
Repeated loud impulses across a season can damage the hair cells of the cochlea, the sensory cells that turn vibration into nerve signals, and in dogs as in people those cells do not grow back, so noise-induced hearing loss builds quietly from one season to the next.
Dogs start to struggle far earlier on the loudness scale than we do. Matija Medved, DVM, explains in Dr.Vet’s expert review of Dog+ hearing protection that dogs can experience discomfort or hearing damage from around 85–90 dB, while humans stay comfortable up to about 110–120 dB. That gap is the starting point for any discussion of how loud is too loud for dogs, and a shoot day sits far above it.
Field evidence points the same way. In a 2002 study at Mississippi State University, veterinarians tested Labradors aged four to ten with BAER equipment, and healthy non-hunting dogs responded to clicks at around 10 to 15 dB. One heavily worked hunting Labrador needed about 60 dB before its brain registered the sound, and the lead researcher described “practically all of the hunting dogs” as having some hearing loss, though the team presented this as preliminary data.
Where should a gundog be when the Guns are firing?
Behind the Gun, never level with the muzzle, never in front of it and never shot over, because distance and angle from the barrel do more for a dog’s hearing than any piece of kit, and experienced handlers hold to that rule without exception.
Forum advice from UK Guns lines up with this almost word for word. “On driven shoots the dog should always be behind the shot and never shot over,” wrote one, while a stalker described his routine as “I drop the dog, move then shoot”. Muzzle blast travels forwards and outwards, so every step behind the shooter counts.
One warning belongs at the top of any page about dog ear muffs. A dog wearing muffs must never be brought closer to the gun because it is “protected”, since that trade gives back more than the muffs take away. Positioning stays rule one, and muffs sit on top of it as an extra layer.
Which shooting roles expose a gundog most?
The dogs with the heaviest exposure are the ones that stand and wait close to the Guns, the peg dog on a driven day and the retriever in a hide or on the foreshore, while dogs that hunt cover ahead of or away from the line hear fewer shots at closer range and cannot wear muffs while they work.
Enclosed positions make things worse. As one UK wildfowler put it, being “confined in a hedgerow hide is obviously going to amplify the sound”, and American duck hunters describe the same problem in a blind shared with several shooters.
| Role | Where the dog is | Exposure | Are ear muffs sensible? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Peg dog, driven shoot (UK) | Sitting at the peg beside or behind its handler | High and repeated, every shot of every drive | Yes, while sitting through the drive, with the dog behind the Gun |
| Picking-up (UK) | Well back behind the line, then sent to retrieve | Moderate per drive, long days | Yes, while waiting during drives; off for retrieves |
| Beating team (UK) | Working cover in front, away from the Guns | Lower, shots at a distance | Usually not; muffs can slip in thick cover |
| Rough shooting, walked-up | Hunting close ahead of the Gun | Intermittent but close | Not while hunting; position the dog behind before a flush where possible |
| Wildfowling, foreshore or hide | Beside the Gun in a hide or on the mud | High, often enclosed | Yes, while waiting in the hide; off before any water retrieve |
| Clay ground, training days | At the stand or in the car park | High and cumulative over a year | Yes if the dog attends; better still, keep it well away from the stands |
| Stalking, rifle with moderator | Dropped behind the stalker | Single shots, still loud | Optional where the dog waits close; distance first |
| Duck blind (US) | Inside or beside a shared blind | Highest, several shooters, enclosed | Yes, while waiting in the blind |
| Upland bird hunting (US) | Ranging ahead of the hunters | Intermittent | Usually not while hunting |
A moderator on a stalking rifle lowers the report but does not remove it, and one stalker summed it up neatly with “the pressure wave is still there”. Service dogs face different exposures again, from ranges to helicopters, and ear protection for police and military dogs is a separate subject from field sport.
Will a gundog still hear the whistle, and do the muffs stay on?
Dog+ earmuffs are passive over-ear muffs, so they lower sound rather than block it, and most dogs still hear a stop whistle and voice commands at working distance, which is why they suit the waiting moments at the peg, in the hide and on the picking-up line rather than active hunting.
“They don’t hear the whistle, or commands” is the objection we hear most, and it usually comes from a bad fit or the wrong moment. Muffs stay on when the size is right and the adjustable headband is snug, and they come off before a dog hunts thick cover or retrieves from water, since they carry no water rating. In-ear alternatives have their own problems, with handlers reporting dogs that shake their heads and throw the plugs out as soon as they go in, and home-made cotton wool wadding is risky because you must be absolutely certain it all comes out again.
Lab evidence on over-ear muffs for dogs is starting to appear. A 2026 study in Veterinary Sciences found that an over-ear canine hearing protection device measurably raised BAER hearing thresholds in 20 of 21 anaesthetised dogs. It used click sounds rather than gunshots, and its results belong to that device, not to ours, but it confirms that a well-fitted cup changes what reaches the inner ear.
For a dog that waits out a drive at the peg or sits in a hide on the foreshore, our Dog+ earmuffs (SNR 27 dB, sizes XS to L, £69.95) fit most breeds through an adjustable flexible headband, soft padded cups and reflective stitching for low light. Introduce them at home in short, calm sessions with food weeks before the first shoot day, and only let the dog wear them under the handler’s eye.
When is the shooting season in the UK and the US?
In England, Wales and Scotland the game shooting season runs from 12 August for red grouse to 1 February for pheasant and partridge, with wildfowling below the high-water mark continuing to 20 February, so a working gundog’s exposure concentrates into roughly six months each year.
The dates below follow the GWCT shooting season dates, confirmed against BASC guidance. Northern Ireland closes some seasons earlier, and game may not be shot on Sundays or Christmas Day in England.
| Quarry or activity | England, Wales, Scotland | Northern Ireland | What it means for the dog |
|---|---|---|---|
| Red grouse | 12 Aug–10 Dec | 12 Aug–30 Nov | Butts and picking-up on the moor |
| Grey and red-legged partridge | 1 Sep–1 Feb | 1 Sep–31 Jan | Early driven days, often warm weather |
| Pheasant | 1 Oct–1 Feb | 1 Oct–31 Jan | The main driven season and the busiest peg days |
| Ducks and geese, inland | 1 Sep–31 Jan | 1 Sep–31 Jan | Flight ponds and hides |
| Ducks and geese, below high-water mark | 1 Sep–20 Feb | 1 Sep–31 Jan | Foreshore wildfowling, the longest season |
| Clay shooting and gundog training | Year-round, busiest outside the game season | Year-round | Steady exposure that adds to the season total |
| US upland birds and waterfowl | Set by each state wildlife agency, mostly autumn into winter | Check your state’s dates; range days run year-round | |
August and September are the time to get kit sorted, before the pheasant opener on 1 October. It is also when most handlers start looking at dog ear defenders in the UK, and a dog that has worn its muffs calmly at home a dozen times is far easier to fit at a cold peg in November.
What are the signs a working dog is losing its hearing?
In a working dog, the first signs of hearing loss usually show up in the field before they show up at home, as a dog that misses the stop whistle at distance, needs a longer or louder blast, or keeps looking back for hand signals it never used to need.
One American handler described his 12-year-old dog as only hearing a whistle “if I blow till I’m red in the face”, which is how gradual loss tends to announce itself. Other signs of hearing loss in dogs include startling when approached from behind, sleeping through the car door or the kennel gate, and not responding when called from another room. A dog that still hears the treat bag can be missing higher-pitched sounds like the whistle, so one good response at close range proves little.
If you notice a change, speak to your vet about a BAER test, the brainstem hearing test that measures each ear separately. The Merck Veterinary Manual describes BAER as the definitive diagnostic and notes that deafness from severe noise trauma is unlikely to improve, which is why protecting the hearing that remains matters so much for a dog with years of work ahead.
What about the handler’s own hearing?
The Gun stands closer to every shot than the dog does, so a handler who takes care over the dog’s ears and none over their own is protecting the wrong half of the team, and most shooting organisations regard hearing protection for the shooter as standard kit.
Low-profile silicone earplugs sit comfortably under a cap or under ear defenders on a long day, and our page on hearing protection for hunters covers our reusable earplugs for shooters and for shoot teams ordering in bulk. Kitting out the whole line, people and dogs, is simpler done once before the season than piecemeal after it starts.
So should your gundog wear ear protection this season?
If your dog spends its days at the peg, in a hide or on the picking-up line, yes, as a layer on top of sound positioning rather than a reason to change it. Beaters’ dogs and spaniels hunting cover are better served by distance, and a dog that seems slower to the whistle deserves a vet’s opinion before the next season rather than after it.
Start with where the dog sits, then add the kit. Dog+ is our over-ear muff for exactly those waiting moments, in four sizes from XS to L, and a few calm sessions at home now mean it goes on without fuss when the first drive of October gets under way.
His connection to hearing protection stems from personal experience with sound sensitivity during live events and work in noisy environments, an issue that made him more aware of the long-term risks of unmanaged noise exposure. Today, as both a communicator and a user of BOLLSEN products, he is passionate about raising awareness around the importance of proactive hearing care.
At BOLLSEN, he develops data-driven marketing campaigns, writes SEO-focused articles, and manages communication channels that connect customers with practical knowledge about hearing protection. His work ensures that BOLLSEN’s message—prioritizing health, performance, and sustainability reaches a global audience in an engaging and trustworthy way.
Passionate about writing since childhood, Timotej combines creativity with a strong analytical approach, continuously testing new ideas in digital marketing, performance advertising, and social media. He believes in learning through innovation and collaboration, balancing leadership with openness to new perspectives.
Beyond his professional role, Timotej is committed to a healthy lifestyle and finds inspiration in fitness, sports, and quality time with friends. His personal passion for well-being aligns with BOLLSEN’s core values, making his work not only a career but also a cause he deeply believes in.