doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Eccentrically-dressed British gentlemen

...expounding on the topic of of eye-dominance as it affects shotgun shooting.



I'm left-eye dominant. I use a pen right-handed, prefer to shoot a rifle left-handed but can do equally well from starboard, have always shot pistols right-handed with either a squint or a blinder, but for whatever reason, I've only ever used my shotguns right-handed to date. And I'm a post-pull squinter, especially when I shoot Skeet. I found this extremely interesting.

Apologies if it's been previously discussed.

I'm pretty much the same. Left eyed dominant. Write-right handed. Shoot a rifle or shotgun right handed either with my left eyed closed or a patch on my glasses. I shoot a handgun right handed with my right eye closed.

Age related? Became left eye dominate in my mid70's. My eye doctor (a HUNTER) said I can fix that. Made a very minor change in eye prescription in left glass lens and now when I'm shooting I'm back to right eye dominate.

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Not in my case. Determined I was left-eye dominant when I started shooting prone smallbore rifle at age 15, after my father (who was a very occasional hunter but nothing resembling a competitive target shooter) counselled me to always shoot with both eyes open. Nothing's changed, to date.

Merci. Speaking as a former coach who's met and listened to and been coached by and traded ideas with some of the best in the business, I can't get enough of this guy.

As a preteen I was cross dominant depending on day and/or conditions. Shooting for 2-3yrs with a dot over my left eye and puberty, I’m confidently right eye dominant and right handed.

Left eye dominant. I shoot right hand and either have the left open or slightly closed. My sister says our parents forced me to be right handed. I don’t remember

Was right eye dominant. It has shifted to the left eye due to some right eye issues. Seems unlikely I'll be able to solve the issues in a way that puts me back to right eye dominant. Its a problem I'm still grappling with.

Right there with you, brother.

Good luck.

Best,
Ted

The two videos with this guys are easily the best I've ever seen. As a frequent squinter, I have struggled with the idea that I'm supposed to have both eyes wide open all the time. For a while, now I've squinted in secrecy.

I'm changing my forum handle to "The Secret Squinter."

I own about six full crossover guns, a dozen sighting devices for off eye shooting, and other lense blocking devices to help my off dominance. I am also scheduled for cataract surgery next week. When that is over, I will watch these videos with an open mind. By the way, all of these devices have been very helpful in my shotgun shooting.

Good luck with the surgery. I had it done 10 days ago. Went with nothing special for a lens and I'm very happy with it so far. Barrel sights are much better, and aperture iron sights are fantastic. I hope you do as well.

Made me laugh. Imprecision of quantity, I mean.

"No, but, how many do you actually have?"

"Uh. Wait... Five-point-seven. The sixth one's just warped. Moisture, I think. But it works!."

I hope your surgery goes flawlessly, sir.

I can't understand a word those British guys are saying...Geo

We'll have to fly over there and teach them to speak proper English, then, Mister Newbern. *cracks knuckles* Meet me at the airport in Newark. We'll take 'em to school.

Oh. Wait.

In all seriousness, I'm fascinated by accents and regional dialects. And how people compute them. It's not always easy. There are some French-speakers where I live who I'd have to lash to a chair and flagellate in order to understand what they're trying to tell me. And I grew up with French in one ear.

I have a friend, a member here, who I speak with on the phone at least once a week. And have for a number of years now. I’m only just now getting to mostly understand what he’s saying on the first go-round. Lol. He’s a born and bred Newfoundlander and when we first started talking, it might as well have been a foreign language. He’s been quite patient with me.

Accents can be quite something. But I’m from Manitoba. I have no accent. Lol.

The only region of the Country with no hint of regional mispronunciation is the American South. So There...Geo

I have struggled with strong cross dominance ever since I took up shotguns and have never progressed beyond stubbornly mediocre. Although I can occasionally hit a few targets with both eyes open, it never lasts so I shoot with a bit of tape on my left lens. Even with glasses, my right (nondominant) eye doesn't have the visual acuity of my dominant left eye and I have recently been told that it is developing a cataract. I hope that better vision after surgery will improve my shooting.

I had cataract surgery late last year.
Vision has improved pretty dramatically.
Scores are improving after a couple of years of pretty dismal performance. During my last check up the Doc said I had scar tissue forming at the surgery locations that can be corrected with a simple laser surgery. So far it’s not an issue.No dominance issues. I will squint a little with the left eye when shooting peeps or scopes but not open sights.

I'm right handed with a left eye dominance. I've shot rifles and shotguns from my left shoulder since I was a child. I've even fired belt fed machine guns from my left shoulder.

My view is that eye dominance isn't as simple as just right or left eye, but more of a sliding scale. At either end are people that have an eye so dominant that any attempt to use the other eye would be difficult to impossible. In the middle there are a few people who have no eye dominance.

People should do what makes them shoot the best, no the way other people think they should shoot.

My brain will get bored and shift dominance. When I was zz-bird shooting a lot my shooting coach noticed it. It caused a number of unexplained misses that he caught while looking over my shoulder while using a wobble trap for practice. The answer was a smudge on the left lens of my glasses which then forced me to be right eye continued dominance.
In the field I don't think it it is much of an issue.

Fascinating subject, as always. The best shooters are consistent in their eye and hand dominance... and then there are the rest of us. Growing up in the early 1960s meant that you were encouraged to be right-handed by your parents and teachers, but maybe not as hard as they were doing it in the 1950s. After much discussion on the subject (by everybody mentioned) my parents allowed me to remain a southpaw going forward. It is my understanding that the reason so-many young men stuttered in America in the 60s and 70s was because they were forced to be right-handed in the 50s and early 60s (the physiology of all that needs to be explained by someone other than me, something about overloading your speech center with your motor-control center?). Anyway, I was left-handed but of-course right eye dominant until I had laser surgery in 2000 (for myopia and astigmatism) whereby then I became more cross-dominant, meaning that neither eye was superior. That surgery was life-altering for me in so-many ways (showering with my wife was far-more fun and my shooting improved dramatically), but time has a habit of changing things up, eh? Now my left eye is so occluded by "floaters" (a gift of PVD) that my right eye has again become more-dominant. Not sure what to do next. Just keep on shooting, I guess.