doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Prescription Shooting Glasses

The eye doc (an accomplished Trap and Sporting enthusiast) sez I need prescription shooting glasses. I'm thinking he is right. Lately, I've been using Decot non-prescription shooting glasses. I didn't even understand the need for "shooting glasses" until recently when a friend gave me his old ones. I used Ray Bans, dime store sunglasses, prescription regular glasses--whatever was handy, not really understanding that the field of view was obscured often by the top of the frame. They all kinda worked, maybe not really, but I got by. Now occasionally, I see 2 birds emerge from the High House--have to decide which one is the real one, some other weird stuff. OK so maybe I hoist the white flag, think about laying out maybe $250-300, maybe more for a pair of Decots (they are in Scottsdale, may 3 hours from here).

I'd sure appreciate any thoughts you might have. Thanks, Gil

Unless you're going anyway, I doubt visiting in person will be any advantage. Just order the lenses and put them in your current frame? I think you'll like it, and along with your prescription, the right color tint will make targets pop.

Get your current prescription from your eye doc and email it to whoever you choose to make your shooting glasses. My choice will be Pilla. I have used their no-prescription shooting glasses for many years, with no regrets. When I decide to go with prescription shooting glasses Pilla will get the nod.

I agree, get your prescription and find the shooting glasses company that fits your sport and hunting style. I've used Decot Hy wide for as long as I can remember. They have a choice now on frames for shooting style but I still use my old frames and change the lenes when needed. Nice folks.

Craigd The reason for the trip up is that the person I spoke with at Decot said my current frames would likely not accommodate the new lenses (as they will be thicker than the non prescription lenses I have been using.)

Thanks Gil. I don't know if it would work, but I have seen Decot prescription lenses that just have a deeper angled notch in thick lenses, so that the same retaining wires hold them like thinner lenses. I think there are many really good shooting glasses, but I think Hy-Wyd's would serve you well. Maybe, if the gas and time buys the frames through the mail, just get the new set? You can try the new lenses in your old frames, if they fit, maybe you can get a second set of lenses, for brighter or lower light conditions? Anyway, best of luck with it.

craig: What about fitting? That couldn't be too difficult--right?

You might want to call Decot to confirm how they would arrange it but I suspect it would work this way: you go there and pick out the frames and lens, they would fit the frames while your there and when the lens are done mail everything to you. Any other color lens you buy down the road can be sent to you and will fit the frame. When I went there after a long hiatus for new lens after my eyes changed, they said their lens were a lot thinner now and I'd have to leave the frames to be adjusted for them.

Hey Gil, Fit to my face? I have two of them, and I ordered them through the mail. I had tried the feel of someone else's out at the range, so I really didn't have any surprises. Recently, I've been thinking about just lenses for hunting, maybe in one of their medium tint shades for when the contrast is low, lots of browns and tans, but I've been able to spot a fair number of incidental, hunkered down, upland birds with my light orange tint of theirs that I ended up with. I like having comfortable for me eye protection, but I suppose they are nice and crisp to look through.

In my experience it was very worthwhile to see a knowledgeable vendor in person. I am 64 and have required a significant correction since my late twenties, and can't get used to contacts, so non-prescription sunglasses were never an option for me. However, I was using prescription polarized sunglasses of the wrap style which never really suited me: The vision was not as clear in one eye compared to my regular prescription glasses, and my eyelashes rubbed on the lenses which were too close to my eyes. I went to Granny Sherman of PMS Firearms in Salisbury NC and her expertise in selecting the right Pilla shooting glasses was invaluable. She identified several issues which were important to getting a good result with the prescription shooting glasses. I have a significant astigmatism, which can't be adequately corrected by glasses with more than a certain amount of curvature, which explained why the wraps were not serving me well. Some of the Pilla lenses are more curved and some are less so, and she got me in the ones which were the right shape for my astigmatism. Also, I had wanted to get the type of shooting glasses which use a clear prescription lens behind a tinted non-prescription lens, so that you can get several different tints without bearing the expense of grinding the prescription into each set. However, this style brings the lens closer to the eye and my eyelashes are on the long side, which made this a bad choice for me and explained the problem I had with my eyelashes rubbing against the wraps. So, I got two different sets of prescription lenses, pink for cloudy days and reflective-surfaced dark lenses for bright sun. I only needed one set of frames as the lenses are easily swapped out of these frames. Pilla has a nice website which gives you a good idea of what various tints do for you, but in-person fitting is important for other issues such as those I described.
For something as expensive as prescription shooting glasses it is definitely worth finding someone with the expertise to help get it right the first try. Salisbury NC is probably not convenient for you, but I would definitely try to identify someone in your region with the expertise and interest to help you choose wisely. Since your eye doctor is a shooter, maybe he could recommend someone.

The Shermans are great folks. Pat repaired a minor issue for me at a shoot once which required a part unique to the Ithaca imported MX8s. Granny has made my molded earplugs since '03, and I've bought a set of non-prescription Pillas from her.

If you cannot meet with the provider, it is important that you not only furnish them with the prescription, but also the distance between pupils.

While I'm awfully fond of Granny and Mike Sherman (saw them this past weekend) and own a set of Pillas purchased from them, another option is to call Wayne Morgan at Morgan Optical in NY. Morgan Optical is the largest dealer in the US for RE Ranger shooting glasses. Wayne is a veritable encyclopedia of all things shooting glasses.

I had a bad experience with Randolph Rangers. They were non-prescription but had the worst distortion in the lenses I have ever encountered. I gave them away.

Just my experience, other's mileage may vary.

You are the only guy that I've ever heard say that out of dozens and dozens of happy customers. You should have sent them back. They can immediately measure distortion and determine if you got some perscription lenses by mistake. I have both prescription and neutral lenses that have been superb - not to mention saved my eyes when an action blew up.

Gil,
When I had my shooting glasses made, the frame fitter (not the Dr), was a shooter. He not only understood that the optical centers had to be spaced per your eye spacing, but also that you don't look straight ahead through glasses when mounted shooting. He had me hold my head and hands as if shooting, then literally used a felt tip pen to mark the lenses for pupil centers where I was viewing through them. For a right hander, it is up and left and opposite for a left handed shooter. This reduces the distortion when in the shooting position.

It was an unusual situation. I had a set of HiDefSpecs, which later became Pilla. I was shooting registered NSCA tournaments pretty heavily and left my set somewhere, carelessly, and lost them. When I bemoaned my carelessness to a shooting buddy he told me that someone had left a zippered set of glasses in his cart at a shoot, and that he couldn't determine who, and I could have them. I accepted, tried them at a casual round of clays with him and some other buds, and found the distortion so bad that I abandoned them on about station 5 and gave them back to him. I would have felt dishonest had I sent glasses back to the company, for replacement, that I hadn't bought. Those were the glasses I mentioned earlier.

I suppose , in retrospect, they could have been prescription (with a very "mild" correction). I had just always assumed they weren't, as they did not seem to be at the time. However, from here on out I will adjust my evaluation of them to accommodate that possibility.

Almost certainly they were prescription lenses, so of course they gave you distortion, just like my wife's glasses do if I put them on by accident.

Almost certainly they were prescription lenses, so of course they gave you distortion, just like my wife's glasses do if I put them on by accident.

I heard you the first time, Brent.

I would have thought if they were prescription glasses there would have been some indication of that on, or in, the case, or on the glasses themselves. But, having never needed or owned prescription glasses of any kind, I was just making an assumption.

There are no such indications on mine. I have both perscription and plain lenses for different purposes. I think you malign a very good company that makes a very good product.

I would have thought if they were prescription glasses there would have been some indication of that on, or in, the case, or on the glasses themselves. But, having never needed or owned prescription glasses of any kind, I was just making an assumption.[/quote]


A "found" pair of Randolph Rangers & you make the "ASSumption" that they are plano (non corrective) lenses & then bash Randolph Ranger in this & several other posts for having distortion in their lenses. Very poor form Stan! I think you owe Randolph an apology. Hopefully you won't get sued.

I agree Brittany Man, and I have already attempted to do just that when I said "I suppose , in retrospect, they could have been prescription (with a very "mild" correction). I had just always assumed they weren't, as they did not seem to be at the time. However, from here on out I will adjust my evaluation of them to accommodate that possibility."

Exactly how, and why, should I do a better job of apologizing to Randolph? Show me a better way and I will consider it. There is no way for me to go back and look at the glasses again. I still maintain they were not prescriptions as I have put on many pairs of others' prescription glasses and seen the terrible distortion they give. The Randolphs I tried were not any where near that bad, but were definitely worse than any Pillas, or even a cheap pair of Remingtons, I ever wore. But, even with that in mind, I have accepted and agreed that I could have been wrong and they could have been prescription. Are you and Brent on the board of directors of Randolph, or do you have interest in the company? To defend any company like you are seemingly doing would suggest that you believe they cannot possibly sell a set of glasses that are not perfect. Do you (plural) really believe that?

I'm concerned that I will lose much sleep going forward over the possibility of getting sued.

Priceless, we are chastised for not ass-uming that they were in fact, prescription lenses.

Just for my own entertainment, I tried on my Decots earlier today. Head down some, slight right tip down and back, and sure enough there's a sharper area where the birds might be. When I ordered them, the helpful person on the phone explained what they did, but I didn't take it all in. Certainly, in-person would be ideal if the right tech were present, but over the phone and through the mail was very satisfactory, in terms of results.

Stan,

My post was meant to be "tongue in cheek" based on the old saying of what happens when we assume things (not that I've never made that mistake myself & got called out on it).

For the record I have no interest in Randolph Engineering other than my wife & I owning 3 pairs of their Shooting Glasses between us (original XL & 2 pairs of xlw) & using them for years with complete satisfaction for both hunting & target shooting + knowing quite a few people who feel the same. We formerly used Decot glasses but for us the Ranger frames are more durable (never had a frame break & can't say that for Decot as we both had frames fail after a lot of usage).

If you had purchased glasses from Randolph & had issues re. distortion or anything else you are free to bash them but w/ distortion in "found" glasses my first thought would be that they probably are corrective lenses for someone & even if they actually are plano lenses (non Rx) how would you know they are Randolph lenses as other people make & sell lenses to fit the Randolph frames.

No problem, Brittany Man. I did not read between the lines well enough to determine you meant that as tongue in cheek. My bad.

These will be my last thoughts on the incident ........ the glasses were not obviously distorting my view when I first put them on, as I believe they would have been had they been prescription glasses. I only noticed the distortion in the "sides" of the field of view, beginning as my view left the center of the lenses. When we look at a show pair, or someone else' targets, we are looking through the dead center area of the lens(es). However, when we mount a shotgun and get a cheek weld we are not, we are looking through the upper part of the lens(es) and to either the right or left a bit, according to which one is our master eye. That is why it wasn't noticeable to me immediately after putting them on. It was only after 4 or 5 stations that I became aware of something that wasn't right. When I purposely looked through outer part of the lens(es) I could see the distortion. A subject object would "move around" as I moved my head slightly.

Lastly, I wasn't "bashing" Randolph glasses. I had made two previous comments addressing the OP's topic and was just trying to be helpful to the OP and others. I only mentioned the Randolphs after the previous poster brought that brand to my, and other's, attention. If the lenses had not distorted my field of view I'd still have them. I've got no bone to pick with Randolph Engineering. I was just passing on a personal experience, however poorly I obviously must have done so.

I had an idea just now, while considering this thread. If ordering a set of prescription shooting glasses, and wanting the lenses ground to your Rx in the right spot, why not mount your shotgun and have a helper snap a pic of you from the muzzle(s)? Forwarding that pic to the company would show them exactly where you are looking through the lens, and should be very helpful to them in tailoring the glasses to you. Should it not?

Stan: That is a GREAT idea. I'm still mulling this over but if/when I make the giant leap, I will definitely do that.

I wonder if you even begin to realize how condescending you can be. I don't own any Randolf stock but I invested in them and they not only made it possible to win quite a few rifle matches, they also saved my eyes from an explosion.

Maybe, when you dont really know what you are talking about, you should just let it ride.