Problem with dominant eye and shooting

[LloydXmas250]

I took a hunter safety course earlier this year and found out something a little troubling about me. I've always been the weird kid who writes, eats and bats left handed, but does absolutely everything else right handed. Throw, shoot baskets, punch, cut with scissors and most importantly shoot. However at this course they taught us how to tell our dominant eye and low and behold, my left eye is dominant. Shooting rifles is no problem as I keep my left eye closed, but shotguns and pistols I try to keep both eyes open as I should. I have noticed I am much much less accurate with pistols and shotguns relatively speaking. I understand rifles are more accurate in general but I'm talking about overall. Easy shotgun shooting like trap is an adventure for me. Plinking with pistols at 10 yds is also interesting to say the least. Is there anything I can do to help my problem or does it even affect me as much as I think it does? I'm sure others have this problem and I'd like to know some tips on how to get around it. Thanks.

[esskay]

Plenty of folks shoot handguns with their off/dominant eye. i.e. you hold it in your right hand but you line up the sights with your left eye. Check out Larry Vickers, he shoots pistols right handed but sights with his dominant/left eye. However, for rifles he will switch to shooting the rifle lefty -- as rifles will also benefit from both-eyes-open shooting like you do with shotguns & pistols.

[LloydXmas250]

There was once a day when I could have shot lefty but it's long gone. I used to be extremely ambidextrous but shooting a gun lefty now is not possible for me. I've tried a couple times just for a laugh and that's all it was good for. I'll check out Larry Vickers and see if i can't pull anything from his routine. Thanks

[DJBSR]

I shoot right handed however with hand guns I use my left eye because it has better vision. I just have to tilt/turn my head a little.

[HCz]

Plenty of folks shoot handguns with their off/dominant eye. i.e. you hold it in your right hand but you line up the sights with your left eye. Check out Larry Vickers, he shoots pistols right handed but sights with his dominant/left eye. However, for rifles he will switch to shooting the rifle lefty -- as rifles will also benefit from both-eyes-open shooting like you do with shotguns & pistols.

Yup

[esskay]

Yup

That's a good depiction of shooting pistol with your off-dominant-eye...

Funny thing, my daughter was playing with a toy gun today and I noticed something odd about how she was handling & "sighting" with it. I did the dominant eye test with her and sure enough while she's right handed, she's left eye dominant!

[MustangGreg66]

That's a good depiction of shooting pistol with your off-dominant-eye...

Funny thing, my daughter was playing with a toy gun today and I noticed something odd about how she was handling & "sighting" with it. I did the dominant eye test with her and sure enough while she's right handed, she's left eye dominant!

Start teaching her to shoot left handed. I'm left eye dominant and right handed, always shot and did everything right handed and never even knew I was left eye dominant until I started shooting smallbore. I do really well for a while, but I find that I fatigue faster than I should when I use my right eye.

I'm now trying to spend some time every range session shooting left handed, pistol and rifle. It feels really weird, but it's slowly feeling less weird, haha. For the longest time I just shot everything with my left eye closed and never noticed a problem, until I tried shooting with both eyes open. I tried that for the first time at a USPSA match and boy have I gotta say it was confusing. With the time crunch in there too, it was just weird. I didn't know where my eyes were focusing for a while. First through my right eye fine and I had a nice sight picture, then all of a sudden I was looking at the side of the pistol and then aligned the sights through my left eye and back and forth.... not fun.

I did try putting a small piece of scotch tape on the inside of my glasses on my left eye. You put it just in line so that when you look down your sights through your right eye, you can't see the gun with your left eye. If you get the tape the right size it works pretty good and keeps your focus from switching between eyes when both are open. The opaque of the tape still lets light in, which allows your other eye to gather more light as well. I did find it annoying though when I wasn't shooting. In USPSA most of your time is spend standing around, taping, timing, scoring for other people, so maybe two pairs of glasses would be best, one taped for shooting and one normal for everything else. That's one quick work around.

Best thing really is to teach yourself to shoot left handed. I know it feels weird, but it should, you have no muscle memory on that side yet, and that takes a while to develop.

[esskay]

Start teaching her to shoot left handed. I'm left eye dominant and right handed, always shot and did everything right handed and never even knew I was left eye dominant until I started shooting smallbore. I do really well for a while, but I find that I fatigue faster than I should when I use my right eye.

I'm now trying to spend some time every range session shooting left handed, pistol and rifle. It feels really weird, but it's slowly feeling less weird, haha. For the longest time I just shot everything with my left eye closed and never noticed a problem, until I tried shooting with both eyes open. I tried that for the first time at a USPSA match and boy have I gotta say it was confusing. With the time crunch in there too, it was just weird. I didn't know where my eyes were focusing for a while. First through my right eye fine and I had a nice sight picture, then all of a sudden I was looking at the side of the pistol and then aligned the sights through my left eye and back and forth.... not fun.

I did try putting a small piece of scotch tape on the inside of my glasses on my left eye. You put it just in line so that when you look down your sights through your right eye, you can't see the gun with your left eye. If you get the tape the right size it works pretty good and keeps your focus from switching between eyes when both are open. The opaque of the tape still lets light in, which allows your other eye to gather more light as well. I did find it annoying though when I wasn't shooting. In USPSA most of your time is spend standing around, taping, timing, scoring for other people, so maybe two pairs of glasses would be best, one taped for shooting and one normal for everything else. That's one quick work around.

Best thing really is to teach yourself to shoot left handed. I know it feels weird, but it should, you have no muscle memory on that side yet, and that takes a while to develop.

She's only in first grade, but I took the kids in the backyard this weekend for some BB shooting (an airsoft pistol and rifle to be precise). Pistol is pretty easy to shoot with the off-eye, so if she's more comfortable shooting a pistol right handed (but sighting with her left eye) I don't have a problem with it. With the rifle, I did have her shoot lefty. In spite of the fact that her hands are so small she could barely reach the trigger without messing up her grip, she did wonderfully. For fun, flicked the happy switch on the airsoft (an MP5) and she emptied the magazine, amazingly tearing a nice ragged hole right in the X ring!! That's my girl!!

Tonight the kids were messing around... my son's favorite word for the past week has been "exoskeleton" (don't ask) and tonight he said he was adopting a new favorite word -- "shoot." Then my daughter said her new favorite word would be "rifle" or "pistol." <proud papa>