Before heading out to hunt, it helps to check whether or not you did everything right. But amidst checking up on land management down to scent masking, many hunters still fail to go over one key thing—concealing the sounds you make. In this episode, fisherman, hunter, and writer, Adam Lewis, shares how sound management is an essential practice in hunting any type of game. Through his experience and expertise, he came up with innovations geared towards sound concealment during a hunt. He established Sound Barrier, a company that aims to aid hunters to get past a whitetail’s last defense, hearing.
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LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE:
Sound Is A Killer – Sound Barrier – Adam Lewis
We welcome Adam Lewis to the show. He is the Founder and Owner of a company that does sound management. What is sound management? That’s what Sound Barrier is all about. He’s going to share with us why Sound Barrier works because it eliminates sound. You could be 0.25 miles away and he’ll hear when your bow hits your tree stand ladder. He’ll hear when your backpack buckle hits a stand. He wants to help you eliminate all unnecessary sounds. Ergo, sound management by Sound Barrier and Adam Lewis.
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I’m here with Adam Lewis. Adam is the Founder of Sound Barrier and he’s also a good writer along the way. Adam, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me, Bruce. It’s good to be here.
Adam has been on the show and he talks about the Sound Barrier. We’re going to deep dive into that because that’s one of the few places that people maybe aren’t managing as well as scent control or approaching the stand. Talk to us about the Sound Barrier.
Sound Barrier is a company I’ve started based around the idea and the need for hunters in the area for sound concealment and how we can better get past the whitetail sense of hearing. What I want to talk about is this idea of sound management. Hunters hear a lot and there are articles out there, blogs and podcasts that talk about land management, food plots and things like that, which is great stuff. There’s a lot out there about sound impact, so there’s a lot of focus on those things. A major component that isn’t focused on that’s super important is what I call sound management. Those are the sounds we make in our hunting areas and how deadly they can be or how they can make or break our hunts. The idea that that sound management is as important as those other ones or hunters to be successful. Especially on a consistent basis and see bigger deer on a consistent basis.
How does that work for the hunters?
The sounds that we make in our hunting areas can be deadly and can make or break our hunt. Share on XI could break it down into the practice of it in about three different ways. First is understanding that it is a problem. The idea that it is quite a bit of research on noises and how far they travel, things like walking on leaves, breaking branches, plunging metal, plus the equipment, which we have a lot of. What I found from that, in a nutshell, is that those sounds treble long ways and the whitetails are attuned to hearing them well. That’s important and we don’t make those. One of those can kill a hunt and a hunting spot. A deer can completely change their behaviors. Even before your hunt a spot, it can be ruined. Sound management is super important.
I wrote an article about this idea. At first, it’s a habit. I’m getting in the habit of thinking about it. We’re used to and were pounded with the camouflage stuff that can pass the deer’s eyes. We’re pounded with the scent concealment stuff. Both of those are important, but the habit of getting our minds on this sound management part, sound concealing part and managing those noises that we make, we’re eliminating them. It is a habit. It’s something that you, the hunters, need to do. I started thinking about different ways that they can eliminate noises. It could be where they approach stands, it could be with hang stands and it could be while they’re hunting in all the equipment that’s involved with that.
Secondly, it’s proactivity. When I say it’s proactivity, there are two meanings there. I was talking to a guy, an outfitter named Jim Hole Jr. and he’s up in Alberta, Canada with Classic Bowhunts. He’s been guiding up there for many years. He chases big bucks up there. He’s had a lot of success and he tries to do that for his clients. One of the things he told me about his three decades of success is he started seeing these patterns. To quote him, he found that, “If the bowhunter wishes to get close to mature deer on a regular basis, not just every now and then or accidentally, he must concentrate his efforts on a gear that is silent. A mature deer have learned not to have tolerance for such a thing.” That’s something that the pros do and the pros know. They are meticulous when it comes to sounds that they make in the hunting area or not making them. This has to do with the gear, their approach, their set up and all those things. It’s something that the pros do to have consistent success.
As a normal everyday hunter, which I would consider myself to be, we need to start doing the same things if we want to have consistent success, seeing deer more often and not blowing deer out of our hunting spots. A lot of times in the Midwest, you’ll find the most deer hunters, but in general, they probably don’t have unlimited spots to go. I know myself and my dad owns 40 acres and 25 is woods. In a situation like that where you have a few acres, even 100 acres, when you’re out of there with a smell or sound, in this case, they’re changing behaviors and pretty soon they’re not on that property anymore. That hurts your hunting and hurt a whole season. Pros know and we, as hunters, need to start thinking about things that way and paying attention to the details of every little sound matters. It could make or break this hunt, not only this hunt but this season. A huge part of it is meticulous with controlling our sounds.
The idea of productivity is proactive. It’s something that a lot of hunters, we don’t think about it ahead of time. We go out hunting and it’s like, “I’ll try to be quiet.” To be meticulous about it as a lot of the pros do, you have to start planning ahead of time and be proactive with it. That means months ahead of time, you are thinking of ways that you’re going to be completely silent or eliminate any chance of making those hunt-ruining noises and mistakes. That means planning your gear, setting stands months ahead of time, figuring out the best entry and exit routes, clearing them out and getting them prepared away before the season. Typically, you want to do that in the winter or early summer if you can to have the spots ready. When you are in your gear, your entry and exit routes, everything is set up in such a way that is going to be hard for you to make any of those noises.
What about your gear? What about your bow when you’re bringing them in the hang on and you get some steps? Typically, a lot of guys would just run and gun, so they’re bringing their stuff with them every single hunt. How does that work?
What you need to do is prep that stuff out ahead of time and analyze your gear and say, “First of all, do I need all this stuff?” Our gear, nowadays, a lot of it is great, but a lot of it is metal and plastic. From our testing, those things are the least natural in a whitetail environment. They’re going to notice those the most and also, those sounds tend to carry the furthest. That has a lot of potentials to mess up behind. What a hunter needs to do is look at their gear and say, “Do I need this stuff?” The stuff that they feel is essential that they’re going to stick with them, run and gun set up or whatever. They need to take action to silence all that gear. I used to use anything I could to silence my stuff and I used to use hockey tape. That works okay. I would cover all my stand, climbing sticks, camera arm and bow arm, and all this stuff. It will at least deaden if I get metal on metal, which always happens. I cannot remember a time when I’m out hunting, as careful as I want to be, I’m always going to climb something a time or two. I would cover it with all this hockey tape and it worked, but it wasn’t that great.
One of the products that we developed is called Buck Bumper and that is specifically designed to soundproof your equipment. I take Buck Bumper and I completely wrap all my gear with it. My climbing sticks are wrapped so there’s no metal exposed that can make noise. My tree stand, there’s always these contact points that are metal on metal. They’re always playing or have the potential to hit those contact points so they can’t make noise. I cover everything, it’s our name, Sound Barrier and creates a barrier to the sound and to the noise. I cover my camera arms and my buckles. Bow arm, hooks or anything that you are using up in the stand, you’re going to want to cover those things. You’re going to want to eliminate the chance of making those mistakes because one little mistake can ruin a hunt.
You told me about the sound levels that deer hear. I’d like to share that with the people again because I thought it was interesting how little sound a deer can hear.
They hear well and quite differently than humans. A lot of people don’t realize that. One way they hear that’s similar to humans is the loudness. Someone’s loud to us is loud to them and soft to us is soft to them. They have advantages in three ways. First is the huge outer ear. That’s what funnels the sound to their ears and also helps them locate the source of the sound quick. Their ears can rotate them and they can hone in on any noise. That’s where the eyes come in. They can scrutinize noise and then they’re out of there. Once they do that, they’re on to you. They can hear better and pinpoint sound way better than humans can. They do pick up sounds much better due to that.
The example I’ll give is we’ve all been there when we’re out hunting and we’re watching a deer in field or something and all of a sudden, the deer start looking in a certain direction and we can’t hear anything. There’s something coming and then a few minutes later, something pops out. They hear that way before we are, so that’s one way their outer ear is picking up sounds. They also hear better in a different frequency range. The funny thing is that’s exactly why do these noises that we make in the woods, whether it be we break a branch, crunching leaves or some of this metal and plastic noise, that’s loudest is where they hear best. They’re attuned picking up that noise well.
The third way they hear better than humans is they’re ultrasonic. What that means is they can hear higher frequencies than we can hear. They can hear over twice as high frequencies or pitches. We make a noise and it’s making frequencies. We can hear its making frequency that we can’t hear and deer can hear all of them. Those higher frequencies also hurt us because they help deer pinpoint our location. They use that for the location aspect. We’re at a disadvantage in the woods in a lot of ways. It shows one other way with the whole hearing thing that they have a big advantage on us.
Pro hunters are meticulous when it comes to sounds that they make and are not making when in the hunting area. Share on XHow do we ever kill a deer? A little clang from your day pack, your arm, your arrow or your bow hits, they hear a lot of the stuff. To us, that was too bad, but the deer within 200 yards of us already know we’re there. How do we combat that?
It’s either a lot of our luck and success is sometimes is sporadic. As a hunter for over 25 years, I can look back and see that sometimes, you don’t know why some nights are good and some aren’t. Some nights you see deer and some nights you don’t. The more I learn as a hunter and learn from mistakes, mostly I see that a lot of times, it has to do with what I’ve done and how I’ve screwed up, probably hunts. When I’ve been able to pay attention to detail on how that stacks the odds in my favor, sometimes it’s luck. Sometimes, we get in there nice and easy or it’s rainy, windy or something like that, like a cover sound that helps us, we’ll play the wind right and all these things. They have to come together for us to be successful or at least see your movement.
It is paying attention to all those details from your scent to your approach and not being heard or seen, but the sound issues. Taking it up a notch, about all these details of not making those noises or limiting those chances. That’s why we came out with this stuff here in Sound Barrier, the Buck Bumper to help with that. I’ve had many times where I’ve clang or clunk something and it’s ruined the hunt. It can ruin a hunting area. With all the effort and preparation you put into the hunting season, it stinks to know that something like that can screw it all up. That’s why we’re here to try to help and eliminate those chances.
Give us a situation where somebody has given a testimonial saying, “Buck Bumper did this until I was able to harvest a nice spot.” Do you have any of those?
I hunt a lot on public lands and up here in Michigan, public land is super high pressure. The deer are constantly smelling, seeing and hearing hunters and they’re moving and changing. They’re super acute to that. One example is that not long in the season, the deer are trained to look up in trees. They’ll be walking through the woods and looking up in trees because they’ve run into many hunters. They are so educated. I knew a good spot and it was back in a bedding area. That’s one of the spots that you have to push into on public land. You can’t hunt the fringes so much. You got to push it and get into the bedding areas. That’s the time when you have to be super critical and super cautious with all of your scent and your sound. We got on there. My dad and I went in and one day, we hang to the stand. We were super quiet about it. We had a good wind and we made a path into the stand. We get there through all this thick brush and goldenrod that was there. We set it up, got out, didn’t go back and we didn’t do anything. We were in there as much smallest amount of time we possibly could to decrease our noise impact.
I went back there on the second day of the season. On the first night, I saw a bunch of deer and I shot a doe and saw where she fell out and when I got her, I got her and drag her out of there. It made little impact on getting in and out. I went back six days later, almost a week later and shot a nice eight-point buck. That was because we were the only people hunting in there. We had taken an effort to soundproof our equipment and soundproof our entry and exit routes. It was just a quick in and out with no noise. A big discussion would be deer senses and what’s most important to deer. The scent is important, but this buck walked down and went to me the entire way it approached. It crossed where I walked in one time and it still came, I still shot it. That’s a testament to taking good precautions with scent. That buck I had no clue I was there. He didn’t hear us at all. He was bedding within a couple of hundred yards there.
Taking all these precautions, especially the sound precautions with our gear, with our approach and our exit, our impact was low and it gave me chance at two deer in the same spot in the whole plan. About five days later, I went back in there and another hunter came in on me while I was hunting and as he came in, he’s making a little noise, not a whole lot but a little noise walking through some brush and I saw an eight-point buck jump up and run out of there and that’s the last time I saw any deer back there because of the intrusion. That’s a success story, but also an example of making a little noise puts a little pressure on the deer and they’re going to change their behavior. It’s important that you’re detail-oriented and meticulous with that and you can see the results.
You’ve taken your ideas and you’ve written some in the North American Whitetail, MidWest Outdoors magazine and Woods-N-Water News. What types of things are you writing articles on and what’s been the response?
The response has been good, Woods-N-Water is a Michigan publication which is the biggest in Michigan, they have 100,000 readerships every month and they have a huge show every year which I spoke at. I talk about this stuff that we’re talking about, I get into more details of things a hunter can do as I have more time. The ideas of sound management and nobody else is writing about it or hasn’t done the research on deer hearing and to have that expertise, so to say on it and it’s been good feedback. For a lot of hunters, it’s something they haven’t heard before or haven’t been emphasized. It’s been good and it’s cool to be part of that and get information out there that can help you in new ways.
When you do a seminar, are you talking about similar things we’re talking about here or do you break it down even tighter?
I go into more detail about the different ways deer hear. I go into more detail about the testing that I did at the University of Toledo, with different hunter sounds and what the results of those tests were. In a nutshell, what was striking is how far some sounds travel. Some are over half a mile that we make in the woods. I go into detail about that and how deer hear and then I give seven practical things the hunters can do on rules of sound concealment, seven practical things they can do to apply this to their hunting and see results.
We’ve talked about some before on your podcast, if your readers go back and find those they can hear a couple of those but they can also find them, if they sign up on our website for a newsletter, they’ll get a free handout that talks about the seven rules that can help them. If the readers go to SoundBarrierHunting.com and under contact hunter’s guide or the actual is a SoundBarrierHunting.com/hunter-s-guide. If they download that hunter’s guide and sign up for that, there’s a free thing we give out that goes into more detail about specifics that they can do.
While deer hear differently than humans, what is loud and soft to us is also the same for them. Share on XIf somebody is new to the sport, they’re starting off, what advice you would give to them because everything’s new and there’s a lot of chatter out there. You can go to YouTube. You can go to chat rooms and social media. Everybody’s got an opinion. If a young guy or girl wants to start off on the right foot, what would you suggest to them?
I would suggest learning as much as possible, also consider the source and know there’s a lot of opinions out there and I would focus on the science, not people with opinions but the science behind it is asking where the facts lie. There’s some stuff out there that maybe isn’t true or is stuff hunters have done for a long time but it might not be the best approach to things. Find a good blog, find a good podcast that focuses on science. On SoundBarrierHunting.com, I come out with a blog every week that delves into this stuff and you can find some good stuff there, especially with the sound concealment part.
I would dig into the science and don’t try to be overwhelmed with things. Pick a couple of things that you can focus on improving and know that it’s going to be a long haul. Even with sound concealment, it’s a process for me and it’s a process for everybody. Every year, I learn more. I get better at it. The habit takes a while to implement in your life and your hunting. I would say to the new hunter, don’t expect to be perfect the first year. It’s going to be a process but think of a couple of things a year you can do to work on and set some goals and look at them and set some couple new ones the next year.
When I think of Sound Barrier and of Buck Bumper, what does that run? What does it cost to do a bow or a treestand or your climbing sticks?
We’ve got some deals. First of all, we changed some of our structures that helped hunters out and we have free shifting. We have a 30-day satisfaction guarantee. Meaning if it doesn’t soundproof your stuff as we claim, you can send them back and get your money back. That’s how much we stand behind it. For example, we have a package that’s called Sticks and Stand Combo for $45and that will soundproof 3 to 4 climbing sticks, completely wrap them with the Buck Bumper and then that’ll do 2 or 3 stands hitting the contact points in soundproofing your sticks and stand. We have a value pack, where they get six rolls. We have a lot of different options. We have a combo pack and there’s one of each.
One roll of the Buck Bumper, which is the thin one you can wrap around things, that’ll cover a little over one Lone Wolf stick, if guys know the size of one of those. The Buck Bumper Thick, that’ll go a long way. A couple of those will do a blind, if you want to do the window ledges, you soundproof those. One roll could do 2 or 3 tree stands if you’re getting contact points on there. If you guys have questions, they can go on our website and if you click on one of them, it’ll give you some information like a buyer’s guide as to how much it’ll cover. You can see one of the things is how much do I need? It tells you how much is in the roll. It gives you square inches and you can measure what you’re thinking of putting it on and calculate how many rolls you need.
What about the freezing weather? In the Midwest, it gets 30 below and the snow or the rains, I’ll guarantee you during the deer season. How does that impact your product?
It shouldn’t impact it. I’d say put it in at home or garage. You want to clean off your equipment first, so there’s not any residue or dirt or dust on there, so it gets a good adhesion and it is permanent adhesive, it’s going to stick. Once you do that in a fairly warm environment and it’s on there. We don’t have any issues with it coming off. I’ve had my stuff on a couple of seasons, it’s season two of my climate sticks and my stand and it’s rain, snow and cold. It stays on once it’s there. It holds up good.
The important thing, do it in your garage where it’s 50 degrees above freezing, right?
Yes. When it’s super cold, the adhesive doesn’t work as good, as far as when you’re applying it but once it’s on there, the adhesive has grabbed. It’s on there. Put it in on in your home and your garage and you should be good.
Do you want to give any shout outs to anybody? Do you have some last-minute, “You should consider this?”
I want to say thanks to my team of guys and also my parents, who’ve been supportive in this process. I got an article coming out in North American Whitetail in November. It’s going to be a cool one, which isn’t about sound concealment, it’s more of a story of a buck I shot in Ohio. It looks at the hunt from two angles. There was another hunter that I had met after I shot this deer named Tom Petrie. He has a show on Sportsman Channel. We met after I shot this deer because he’s been chasing him for two years and it’s a cool story because I wrote it from both of our angles. There’s his story and my story in there and there are cool things coming out in North American Whitetail. Check us out at SoundBarrierHunting.com. We can help you with the idea of sound concealment sounds in your gear. Check us out there. We’ve got a lot of information with our blog also the product Buck Bumper to silent your stuff. It’s free shipping and satisfaction guarantee, go and check that out.
On behalf of thousands of readers across North America, thank you so much for being on the show.
Thanks for having me, Bruce. That was a good time and pleasure and thanks again.
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I’m excited to have Bradley Boatman on the show and he and his buddies started Red Oak Hunting. What is Red Oak Hunting? Down in Arkansas, they hunt the oak trees but more important than that, they love showing the hunt as it is, real people in real places. They hunt does and they’ll take does every year to feed the family. They started simply because they wanted to catalog all their hunts, all their fun, their misses, and some of their missteps. All in all, he talks about private land hunting and public land hunting. It’s going to be a great show. Thanks for tuning in.
Important Links:
- Sound Barrier
- Adam Lewis – past episode
- Classic Bowhunts
- Buck Bumper
- SoundBarrierHunting.com
- SoundBarrierHunting.com/hunter-s-guide
- Bradley Boatman – past episode