Ambi-ocular

[savannah]

I have been spending several days a week shooting trap, skeet, sporting clays, five stand and wobble. Love them all. Some days I would be "on" and other days I really struggled. For the most part I was shooting my shotgun one eyed even though I was told that two eyes were optimum. I tried two eyes, I tried really hard. I would shoot a round ok, then stop and watch my husband shoot and go up again and just fall apart. It was truly frustrating. I asked my husband what his sight picture was and basically he was doing the same as me. He was visualizing six to eight feet past the trap house and watch for the bird, swing through and shoot. We were doing that the same however he would do round after round quite well. I would do a round well and then fall apart, or I would start out bad and then have an almost perfect round.

I went home and did some reading on eye dominance and the different eye dominance tests. The first few test we did, both of us were right eye dominant. About an hour later after some reading, we tried a different eye dominance test. My husband again was right eye dominant, but I tested left dominant. We tried a few more times, the first test over again and it showed I was indeed cross dominant. What??????? The next morning before shooting we tested again and my husband tested right dominant and I tested right dominant also. Now this was getting maddening. We went shooting and I had a terrible day until I finally gave up and patched my left lense, then I shot fine.

I called my opthomologist and went to see him that day. We discovered that I am ambi-ocular. I don't have a dominant eye. I do tend to test right dominant more than left, but it can change for no apparent reason. My opthomologist told me that this is fairly common in women and actually young boys, except young boys grow out of it. Today while shooting it happened again. I was shooting very well with only a small dot on my shooting glasses. I went and watched a friend shoot doubles, came back and picked up my gun and my eyes were seeing double. What I actually see is the trap house with a ghost trap house. I can see my barrel in my peripheral vision......well actually two barrels in my peripheral. It was a confusing picture. Once again I completely covered my left lense and the double images went away and I shot fine.

Does anyone else struggle with these weird eye issues? What do you do to overcome the double vision.

[pax]

As one eye tires of being focused, the other one tries to compensate - and that's where the vision problems occur.

You might investigate eye exercises to strengthen the vision. Perhaps you can train one eye to be dominant. Or continue with some variation of the solution that you have been using (covering one eye).

People who don't require a prescription often put a clear tape over the safety glasses on their non-dominant eye side, to allow in the light. I would not want to use tape on expensive and sensitive lens coatings on prescription glasses. I have a flip-down shade that clips onto the glasses lens of the non-dominant eye. I've also known people with prescription lenses have their glasses made with a translucent non prescription lens on the non-dominant eye. This was very range-specific, as the focal distance of the lens of the shooting eye had to be set up for their sights, meaning the target itself was out of focus.

Hope you find something that works for you, so you can enjoy shooting more!