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1 eye open or 2 eyes open


Eric1231

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Two eyes open gives you greater field of view. Helpful on target transitions and moving. I taught myself how to shoot with both eyes open, but there are shooters better than me that shoot both ways. So try two eyes open in dryfire for a while and see if you can acclimate to it. If not, you can still be a good shooter

Daniel K

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There are times to use each, certain competitive disciplines are pretty much limited to one or the other. Are you asking for a certain type of shooting or just in general? If in general, definitely learn to shoot with both eyes open comfortably. 

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The greatest determination of this is your degree of eye dominance. People with a strongly dominant eye have an easy time shooting with both eyes open. Place sights in front of dominant eye and shoot.

For people like myself, whose eyes are very close to 50/50, we have a stronger 'ghost' image and it's tougher. I smear a very light film of chap stick over the "through the sights" portion of my glasses on the weak side, and it keeps things crystal clear.

Closing one eye robs you of peripheral vision, and always causes the remaining eye to squint a little bit. It also makes it harder not to blink when the gun fires, which is one of the earliest steps in learning to call your shots. 

Edited by MemphisMechanic
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On 1/15/2017 at 2:30 PM, MemphisMechanic said:

The greatest determination of this is your degree of eye dominance. People with a strongly dominant eye have an easy time shooting with both eyes open. Place sights in front of dominant eye and shoot.

For people like myself, whose eyes are very close to 50/50, we have a stronger 'ghost' image and it's tougher. I smear a very light film of chap stick over the "through the sights" portion of my glasses on the weak side, and it keeps things crystal clear.

Closing one eye robs you of peripheral vision, and always causes the remaining eye to squint a little bit. It also makes it harder not to blink when the gun fires, which is one of the earliest steps in learning to call your shots. 

I have this same problem.  Seeing a ghosted gun doesn't bother me...its the ghost targets that bother me.  Anything but a target focus causes two targets.  Like Memphis I fix this on my weak eye.  I use a little sticker called a "magic dot".  Chap stick works, frosted scotch tape works.  The magic dot was just a cleaner solution and its the same on all my lenses.  Adding the dot instantly made me able to shoot better and has been one of the biggest single changes to improve my performance.  I wish I did not have to use the dot because its awkward when walking around, taping targets or whatever.  You get used to it but would rather not need it.  I tried exercises to strengthen my "strong" eye but have not been successful. 

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If you can shoot with two eyes open do it. I taught myself to shoot with two eyes open while shooting skeet. 

You can do it if you are determined to shoot with both eyes open. Although  it will take some time to get used to and your shooting will probably suffer initially but the benefits of shooting with both eyes open will pay off in tactical shooting with quicker target acquisition. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

 

On ‎1‎/‎15‎/‎2017 at 3:30 PM, MemphisMechanic said:

The greatest determination of this is your degree of eye dominance. People with a strongly dominant eye have an easy time shooting with both eyes open. Place sights in front of dominant eye and shoot.

For people like myself, whose eyes are very close to 50/50, we have a stronger 'ghost' image and it's tougher. I smear a very light film of chap stick over the "through the sights" portion of my glasses on the weak side, and it keeps things crystal clear.

Closing one eye robs you of peripheral vision, and always causes the remaining eye to squint a little bit. It also makes it harder not to blink when the gun fires, which is one of the earliest steps in learning to call your shots. 

 

I assume you have been shooting with two eyes for many years now.  Have you ever been able to get to the point where you could get rid of the tape?  I just started trying to shoot both eyes open this year in the off-season.  Now that I am over 40 and can't change focus as fast as when I was younger so I am finding the tape to be a significant disadvantage (because now both eyes are blurry at distance) although it definitely works and would be great if I was younger.  I am just trying to figure out I should continue to try to teach my brain to switch eyes or go back to shooting with one eye.

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  • 2 months later...

My fiance uses tape.

 

I trained out cross dominance. It was hard, but only took about a month. For 10 minutes per evening I would take my gun, wink my left eye and line the sights up with my right eye. Then I would slowly open my left eye and concentrate as hard as I could to keep the image of aligned sights in my head. At first it was just under a second, later I could do it indefinitely. Then I started bringing the gun up with both eyes open and focusing on the correct image of aligned sights, again it was hard at first, but now it's second nature. I bring a gun up, sights are aligned, I see what I need to see.

 

I did get headaches and "sore eyes" for a couple weeks, but they only lasted about a half hour after my training sessions. I'm at the point now where aligning sights with my left eye is more difficult and takes concentration, but using my right eye is much more natural. I notice no difference in precision with both eyes open, but  I shoot ~1-1.5" at 25 yards to the left when I shoot with both eyes open. For this reason, on long shots I like to wink my left eye. YMMV of course

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  • 2 months later...

Two eyes is better but not everyone can do it.  i've tried for years and can't get it. I even shot for a while with a piece of tape over the non-dominant eye lens to teach myself.  Never happened...

I know lots of people that tried it once and got the hang of it immediately.  If you can do that, it's worth doing...

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  • 2 weeks later...

Shoot one eyed on almost everything but stuff I don't need the sights for at all. It's never been the issue for why I haven't done well or been able to improve something in my shooting. Just makes me look ugly in pictures.

 

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I spent my whole life shooting with one eye closed until recently.

I was able to train myself to keep both eyes open and develop an index on the draw through a LOT of dryfire.

Once I had that part down the hard part was tracking the sights in live fire. That took me quite a bit longer to do and is still a work in progress.

I do think that having both eyes open has been a huge help in transitions and movement through the course of fire.

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On ‎7‎/‎8‎/‎2017 at 10:27 PM, davidb72 said:

I spent my whole life shooting with one eye closed until recently.

I was able to train myself to keep both eyes open and develop an index on the draw through a LOT of dryfire.

Once I had that part down the hard part was tracking the sights in live fire. That took me quite a bit longer to do and is still a work in progress.

I do think that having both eyes open has been a huge help in transitions and movement through the course of fire.

 

I'm a one eye guy and have been trying in dry fire to do two eyes open. The hardest part is not focusing on anything so I can get a decent sight picture. otherwise I see two separate front sights. I am a righty with left eye dominant. As soon as I hear a start signal though I always default to one eye and blast away. I've found a lot of top shooters do the same thing including some who tape glasses or other tricks so I'm at least more comfortable knowing that if I can't train myself on two eyes open that I am not alone.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Will the tape on one lens help deter my eyes propensity to shift to a target focus?  because while the sights are blurred the target is clear with both eyes open, so I've caught myself doing this.  I have also found that I default to shooting with both eyes open, however I also noticed that while my dominant eye is dominant enough to control the act of aiming accurately my overall sight picture is very blurred.  I often find myself on a stage starting my run focusing on the sights only to switch to a target focus.

 

I guess it could be old range habits, like checking for my hit (would think not though).  I dabbled in squinting my weak eye but that has not helped and only resulted in me squinting both eyes.  I know it all comes with training and time but I'm interested to hear from all you guys with masterful hindsight.

 

Thanks!

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  • 2 weeks later...

I shoot with both eyes open.  When target focused you will naturally have a two guns/two sets of sights.  One should be much blurrier than the other and after a little practice you just dont notice it.

 

My problem is with a hard front sight focus for harder shots, I get the reverse, two targets.  I can slowly bring my front sight into more focus and end up with two sights/guns, one blurry one in decent focus, and a blurry target. But I can only do this very slowly.  If I quickly front sight focus I get two separate targets.  On something like steel this makes shooting difficult.  I have tried multiple techniques and eye training to resolve this but have not succeeded.  The solution for me, at this time, is to tape my non dominate eye.  I use a "magic dot" on my left eye.  This is very similar to closing one eye but I get to keep both eyes open, which is more natural for me.  With the tape I can get a target focus while my sight is only slightly blurry, almost like I can focus on both at the same time or similar to shooting an open gun.  It was an instant and drastic improvement for my shooting.  If I was to shoot open I dont think the tape would be useful or needed.  

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