Falling on deaf ears

I am old and deaf. A lot of this was ignorance, standing alongside my clay pigeon shooting father from the age of five without hearing protection. I will take the responsibility for game shooting without hearing protection in my teenage and later years. For some of this time I did not know better. When I did, those around me set a bad example, which I foolishly followed.

I was, therefore, really pleased to see your article Sound Advice in this March’s issue. I hope it will set the standard and also encourage everyone to save their hearing, and not end up like me.

However, the main picture on the front cover shows Peter Theobald pigeon shooting without wearing any hearing protection. On page 5 he is photographed once again with no hearing protection. To top it all off, on page 63 he is at it again, without hearing protection.

I appreciate he as an individual may not wish to wear hearing protection, but it sends completely the wrong message to the readers of your magazine. To have done this is bad enough, but on the feature specifically about protecting hearing it is totally unacceptable.

Duncan Ferguson Ed - Duncan, see Peter’s reply on page 69