[4972]

don't feel like the Lone Ranger theearl.

I also am left eye dominant - right handed. What I have the most problem with is pistol shooting. I am most comfortable holding a pistol in my right hand and using a right handed stance with my feet, however hanving to move the gun slightly to the left to accomodate my eye dominance tends to throw things off unless I am EXTREMELT careful and meticulous with my setup. I don't have too many problems with scopes, but I think part of this has to do with my training. I am an avid hunter and have nearly trained myself through repetition to be able to shoot with both eyes open. This seems to have helped my accuracy with all aiming styles(open sights,scopes,peeps, etc)

 

[Dave M.]

Same problem here. Not too much trouble with a scope, but a shotgun is a different story. I shoot fairly well, but I MUST close left eye and aim with the right. There is no throw it up and shoot with both eyes open. I also have a very hard time with open sight.

 

[Citori]

Shooting a shotgun with one eye closed is not nearly as a big a disadvantage as clay shooters make it out to be. I did it for several years before a guy showed me a technique to fix it. Now I shoot everything with both eyes open, shotgun, scopes, handguns with irons, everything.

My shotgun scores didn't really go up because I opened my other eye but it did help me get on the clay faster because I could pick up movement better. It also keeps me from getting 'lost' on doubles. Oddly, the biggest advantage I've found to keeping both eyes open is getting on target with a scope. I used to have a tough time getting the target inside the field of view. Now I just look at the target and move the scope into the path of my eye, and there it is.

The notion that you have to have both eyes open comes from the thinking that you need them both to accurately judge distance. As most optometrists will tell you, when you are dealing with an object of known size, like a clay bird, your brain will use its preceived size to judge distance as much as it uses your stereoscopic vision. One eye is usually enough.

 

[vmaxx]

citori

I would like to know more about the shooting with both eyes open technique. Could you go a bit more indept about it.

 

[Coyote]

I guess because of the work I am in, I was trained and train others to always shoot with both eyes open. In fact on the shooting range if we see people close one of their eyes, they are pulled off the ranges, spoken to, advised and then placed back on the range.

If we have a left eye dominant shooter (and right handed), and they do not have bad habits, we will try to retrain them to shoot left handed. This has been fairly easy with new shooters. It amazed them to know that they are right handed but able to shoot very well left handed.

 

[Blackhawk]

me too

I too am left eye dominant and right handed. I just squint my left eye and force my right one to take control. I do pretty well with this when I go to the shotgun range. Just squint the dominant eye and the other eye will take over

 

[Citori]

They way I learned to do it was through progressively allowing my off eye to see more and more clearly.

A couple of years ago a guest instructor at my club started me off by covering the lens of the shooting glasses over my non-dominant eye with black electrical tape, completely. He had me shoot with both eyes open (but only the dominant eye seeing anything) until I was comfortable with it. It took maybe a week of regular shooting. He then took the black tape off and covered the lens with that opaque fiber packing tape. It let some light through but I still couldn't see anything. This went on and on, to the non-fiber opaque plastic tape to some translucent white tape, to cloudy scotch tape, blah blah. To the best of my recollection the progression to nothing took around a month and a half or two months. This instructor works for Browning now, and I think they are marketing a packet of press on dots designed to do what this guy did with tape.

I see a lot of instructors these days who will stick a piece of cloudy scotch tape to the glasses of their female students after seeing them shoot. They tell me that cross eye dominance is a lot more common with women than men, and the tape seems to help.

The biggest thing is to get comfortable with each step before going on to the next, and to take the smallest steps you can. At least that is what worked for me and I was taught as far back as I can remember to shoot with one eye closed.

As I mentioned before, I don't exactly know how much this helped my scores. With a shotgun I noticed that I get on the birds sooner and can nail those fast going away shots better now. The biggest impact was where I thought it wouldn't matter: with a scoped rifle. I've seen guys shoot skeet going straight away with rifles, and I imagine that two eyes would almost be a requirement to get the bird inside the scope's field of view.

When I first started shooting clays with some regularity about 8 years ago I never heard anyone mention vision. Lately I've been hearing and reading about it a lot. If you have problems with vision as it relates to shooting someone somewhere in the shotgun sports is probably doing something that can help you out.

 

[vmaxx]

citori

Thanks for the info. I sure am learning a lot from guys like you and I have never heard of this concept til now. and thanks again for going more in depth with it. I'm sure this will be of benefit to many of us.

 

[cgv69]

They way I learned to do it was through progressively allowing my off eye to see more and more clearly... by covering the lens of the shooting glasses over my non-dominant eye with black electrical tape, completely.

Hey Citori,

Couple of Q's...

I'm not following how the method you describe works? By covering the non-dominant eye, aren't you just strengthening the dominant eye? That aside, if you are a right handed, left eye dom. and you completely cover the right eye, how do you sight down the barrel? I say this because I have a stigmatism in my right eye. When I was a kid, the doctor had me where a patch over my strong eye (left) in an attempt to strengthen my weak eye.

The method that was described to me for shooting was to use scotch tape on your shooting glasses over the dominant eye which forces the weaker eye to take over. (Kind of the same concept as squinting the dom eye.)

My issue with my stigmatism (sometimes called a lazy eye) in my right eye is if I try shooting with both eyes open, I don't look down the barrel. (With a scoped gun that would mean I would be looking at the side of the scope instead of through it.). Worse is, if I close my left eye, my right eye still doesn't aim correctly. This is not an issue for me shooting a hand gun because I can turn my head so that I am sighting through my left eye. (Can't do that with a long gun)

I'm a little too set in my ways (and really don't want to) learn to how to shoot left handed. The good news is I'm not competitive. I shoot for the fun of it but I do wish I could do something to correct, or at least compensate for this vision issue.

Anybody know if Lasick(sp?) can do anything for stigmatisms?

Thanks