Ultimo-Hombre Posted May 28, 2012 Share Posted May 28, 2012 (edited) So it has been a rough week. I was voulenteering as an RO for a very large charity match (300+) and long story short I took a bullet fragment hit to my right eye.... all precautions in place, eye pro!... excellent set up great match I have nothing bad to say about anyone or anything regarding the match, just some realllllyyyy BAD luck! took a hit to my cornea, got a grarley hematoma and one of the worst intact lens injuries the er physician had ever seen to my conrea. It is unlikely i will ever regain good visual acuity in my right eye. I have always been left eye dominant but do everything right handed. I am a pretty good limited class shooter and this is really breaking my heart cause i dont wanna suck ass trying to relearn how to shoot left handed. I been doin this for 25 years. Anyone out there who shoots right handed but indexes the gun to sight picture with the left eye? I welcome some thoughts, ideas and experiences! Edited May 28, 2012 by Ultimo-Hombre Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clint-M Posted May 28, 2012 Share Posted May 28, 2012 No personal experience but I watched Burkett's Practical Shooting recently and remember him saying to do everything the same but keep your right arm a little straighter to shift the pistol to the left... I'm sure there is more to it but that's all I remember. CM Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlexOsensei Posted May 28, 2012 Share Posted May 28, 2012 I am right hand left eye. It's just an habit. But dont changhe ur stance just rotate the right wrist to aim correctly. Working on it in dryfire , u'll gain the new habit in a while Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ultimo-Hombre Posted May 28, 2012 Author Share Posted May 28, 2012 would love to hear from more shooters on this please! Anyone who has had to make the transition due to losing an eye? although I was left eye dominant I was forced as a child to be a rightey thought nothing of it...etc, I have had a previous career as a professional trigger puller and have been shooting right and aiming right rye and done just fine. The only problem has ever been shooting sporting clays, both eyes open and i cross up but I dont give a shit about clays. Here is my dilemma.... My right eye is hamburger,I cant tell if I am looking down an acog or boresighting a 155. All I really care about for the time being is able to continue my USPSA and steel challenge quest. I have experimented with making the very small changes to allow me to sight with my left using my right hand hold. I used to always close my left eye because of its strong dominance, trouble is now that when i get moving it all goes to shit! I am thinking about getting a pair of the old man flip up lenses to wear over my standard eye pro and blacking out the right lens. then at each stage when I make ready effectively taking my shredded right eye out of the equation.... Anyone else do this? Any infringement to any rules by doing this? Much feedback is needed! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wanderer Posted May 28, 2012 Share Posted May 28, 2012 (edited) as already said, just a slight movement in the wrist will have the gun lined up to your left eye. stand in front of the mirror and aim at your left eye, your natural point of aim will have you lining the gun to your right eye. just push the rear of the gun to line up with your left eye. you may have to adjust your shoulders or arms slightly but not much. dry fire till it becomes natural. dont cover the right eye, place some opaque tape on your glases and keep both eyes open. if you dont already, now is the perfect time to learn it. especially if you dont get perfect vision back. by the way, real sorry to hear about your eye injury, glad to hear it's not going to make you give up shooting. good luck and hope you get perfect vision back. Edited May 28, 2012 by wanderer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlexOsensei Posted May 28, 2012 Share Posted May 28, 2012 yes it's hard. I can imagine how can be terrible to restart again in learning to shoot and for the eye injury. But If u want u can. Just be patient. Good luck dear Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chef J Posted May 28, 2012 Share Posted May 28, 2012 I am really sorry to hear about your accident, that really sucks. All Is Not Lost!!! I had been strongly right eye dominant since I started shooting as a kid, though the military and into my 30s. I took probably 2-3 years off of shooting in my early 30s, up to this point I had not shot anything competitively. About 2 years ago toward the end of my time out I had laser eye surgery not even considering how the correction might change my shooting. As soon as I was healed up things got really weird, I ended up strongly left eye dominant. I tried indexing to a familiar sight picture at my right eye and my brain just was not having it. You will likely have much more muscle memory to overcome than I did as I am just now getting into competing, but I cant say enough how surprised I was to find my brain pushing me to use my left eye. If you brain works like mine it will direct your body to align the sights, it's going to take some time to get use to but you will be good to go. Stay positive and get well soon! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AWLAZS Posted May 28, 2012 Share Posted May 28, 2012 I was hit in the right eye with a bungee cord. My right eye will not focus or adjust for light making my vision a little messed up. My left eye will act like my dominate eye if I put the gun there. If you block out your right eye with some tape on your glasses and draw the gun to you good eye you should be ok. It takes a time to re train yourself but it will work. Good luck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ultimo-Hombre Posted May 28, 2012 Author Share Posted May 28, 2012 thanks for the support, I am gonna go shoot a steel match tonight and will see how I do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chuck s Posted May 28, 2012 Share Posted May 28, 2012 I am really suprised that you used your right eye preferentially from the beginning. I would think it would be a very short learning curve to start using your left eye as it has always wanted to be the dominate eye. I would also think that since your right eye is so blurry, you would not have a need to block it out( kind of like using scotch tape over your glasses). Not to bring up bad memories, but how di the frag slip by your glasses? or did it break the lens? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
junkie Posted May 28, 2012 Share Posted May 28, 2012 How about you tell us how it happened again. I am a bit curious??? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Youngeyes Posted May 28, 2012 Share Posted May 28, 2012 Sorry to hear of your accident. If it happened recently, it is a bit premature as to a final visual acuity result. I do alot of post surgical and post trauma work and have seen some incredible results. If the damage is confined to the cornea and anterior segment there can be many choices as to treatments. Laser,grafts and specialty contact lenses to name a few. Hang in there. Time and a good group of doctors will see you through. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Braxton1 Posted May 29, 2012 Share Posted May 29, 2012 (edited) I agree with Youngeyes. Don't give up hope. There's a lot of technology out there today that wasn't there even five years ago. Just do EXACTLY what the doctors tell you. (I would stay away from moderate to heavy recoil for a few weeks. Docs usually don't want you shooting after R.K. surgery for a few weeks because of the inherent weakness in the cornea until it fully heals.) Edited May 29, 2012 by Braxton1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ultimo-Hombre Posted May 29, 2012 Author Share Posted May 29, 2012 Thanks for the replies! Surely time will sort it all out.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gdboytyler Posted May 29, 2012 Share Posted May 29, 2012 How about you tell us how it happened again. I am a bit curious??? I'm also curious about how it all happened. I always wear prescription safety glasses because I get them for free for work; but didn't wear sideshields during shooting. After I started shooting 3-gun matches, I started using ballistic goggles over my glasses to keep them from moving around when I went to the prone position for long-distance rifle shots. After I got used to the goggles at the 3-gun matches, I always wear them for any type of shooting; cheaper than wrap-around prescription glasses. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ultimo-Hombre Posted May 31, 2012 Author Share Posted May 31, 2012 Thanks for the thoughts. Specifics as to how the injury occured are not the intended focus of my posts. I understand all of us wanting to ensure safe practices, and all appropriate safety precautions were followed. The ultimate severity of the injury i recieved was due to some extenuating circumstances away from the shooting event and range, the details of which arent worth mentioning here. If there were any lessons learned information pertinant to safe range operations I would eagerly share them. My purpose in posting was to tap the wealth of available knowledge available here to address the issue of transitioning from sighting with one eye to the other. Again thanks for the sentiments and information! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wild Gene Posted May 31, 2012 Share Posted May 31, 2012 I am hoping you went to an Opthalmologist and not just the ER Doctor. I almost lost my sight because I didn't with an injury. WG Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlamoShooter Posted May 31, 2012 Share Posted May 31, 2012 (edited) Don't give up on healing. keep working the eye when it gets over the trauma. I have always shot left eye right hand. its just not a big deal, I give up 0.025 seconds on my first shot. I may not be great but I am good enough my best events were 3rd to Jerry M at steel challenge and the Hand gunner. my only problem now is all the years of shooting Open when my eyes were young and now I am older and going back to Iron sights. Work on healing , your going to be fine I can add too that shooting shotgun is not hard to learn left handed with good instruction. its one way I demonstrate to students. As all that takes is some good help to cross over left hand with a sporting shotgun. The Right hand is the normal pointing hand any way so having that hand out front is good. I don't even call shooting left hand "week hand" I just call it left and right. Edited May 31, 2012 by AlamoShooter Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JBC123 Posted May 31, 2012 Share Posted May 31, 2012 Very sorry to hear about your injury. Hope it mends well! I'm right-handed and can't even stir coffee or brush my teeth lefty. I took a racquetball in the right eye in college and tore my retina up very badly (the one time I had no eye pro). Due to being soft, the ball intruded into the eye socket and did more damage than, say, a baseball would have. Now after several surgeries vision on that side is like looking through a frosted, wavy glass block, 20/400, and no pupil response. The upshot is that my left eye seems to have compensated by getting a little stronger (last check-up was 20/15). Long story short, I had to learn to shoot long guns lefty (easy transition for me), but I still shoot handguns righty. You can get used to it. I find myself tilting my head slightly to the right or extending the gun slightly to the left to line up under my left eye. You may experience some double vision (I do), but it seems your brain can tune that out. One of my docs said that that the brain won't really tolerate double vision, and kind of "switches off" the offending side. An oversimplification I'm sure, but it seems to be the case. I agree with Youngeyes and AWLAZS. You can probably expect some improvement, and there are some amazing procedures they are able to do with lasers. I'll be glad to PM you what all I had done if you'd like, although our injuries are to different areas. You can adapt and overcome it, just try not to get frustrated. Get well and hang in there! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
two shoes Posted May 31, 2012 Share Posted May 31, 2012 Have you tried just turning your head ~15* to the right? I didn't loose my eye, but did have some issues with it. I turned my head to the right while keeping my normal stance and grip. I use it still just for training, if I had to use my left eye. My boy is cross-eye dominant and he does the same thing for pistol. Give it a try, I think it might work for you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Max It Posted August 17, 2012 Share Posted August 17, 2012 Hey, I have only one eye now; injury when 10 years old. Hombre is scaring me. I shoot steel matchs. What other than polycarbonate glasses do I need? much obliged, Max Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
benos Posted August 17, 2012 Share Posted August 17, 2012 Anyone out there who shoots right handed but indexes the gun to sight picture with the left eye? I did that for many years. It's not a handicap in any way. be Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dragon52 Posted August 18, 2012 Share Posted August 18, 2012 I have had a few injuries to my right eye. It has been removed 3 times to cut steel out of it. I had a problem a few months ago with it. Went to a good eye doctor and with the right meds. I now have 20-20 back in that eye. So what I am saying is dont give up hope. It can get better with time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Donovan Posted August 19, 2012 Share Posted August 19, 2012 Sorry to hear about accident , good to see you are not giving up , GOOD LUCk... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dennis (CT) Posted August 20, 2012 Share Posted August 20, 2012 Have always shot shooting cross-dominant (began IPSC in '98). Practice your normal draw (aka dry-fire) and decide (1) whether your want to turn your head slightly or (2) when you draw move the gun "just off center" of your body to "favor" your left eye. After a short while you won't even notice the difference while your right eye heals. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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