mouthcaller,
People with hearing loss have an extremely difficult time locating a sound. People with hearing loss in one ear and no hearing at all in the other ear, absolutely can not tell directionality of sound. The way you locate a sound source has to do with the minimal difference in time that a sound reaches your left ear vs the right. It also has to do with the minimal difference in intensity between the left and right ears. For example, a sound from the left side reaches your left ear first and at a slightly louder intensity than your right. This difference is so minimal, but a healthy functioning auditory nerve (cochlea) is sensitive to detect this. Nerve hearing loss is usually the result of fine hair cells in the nerve portion of your ear. These hair cells are needed to help detect the fine differences in time and intensity in order to localize sound. Even with perfectly fit hearing aids, someone who has normal hearing will have a better ability to localize sound. In general, the greater your hearing loss, even with hearing aids in, the greater difficulty you will have localizing sounds. Your father could have his hearing aids checked and his hearing checked to assure that they are set appropriately for his hearing loss, but I bet he will still have difficulty localizing those gobblers in the woods. Fortunately he can at least still hear the gobblers with his hearing aids. Also, most newer hearing aids have compression circuitry that will basically shut down the hearing aids prior to them reaching loud, dangerous levels. They will let speech and normal sounds come through, but as a gun fires or some other loud sound presents itself, it immediately shuts down giving you some degree of hearing protection.