Two eyes open?

[Clay1]

Lots of responses to this one. Let me come at it from a little different background - sporting clays. In shotgun shooting you don't aim a shotgun, you point it. Things have to be natural. I have read a few comments on dominant eyes, but you first must figure out which one is really dominant.

There are many ways to do this but one that I can explain is to make an OK sign with your fingers. Extend your arm out and look through the ''O" that you created with your thumb and index finger with both eyes open. Pick a small object on the other side of the room, a light switch the small light on the answering machine, whatever and center that object in the "O". Now close your left eye. Is the object still centered in the "O"? If it is you are right eye dominant. Try it again and this time close your right eye. Did the object come out of the "O"? Again you are right eye dominant. If you center it with both eyes open and close one eye and it stays centered the eye that is still open is your dominanat eye.

So, what is the big deal with eye dominace? It is how you are predisposed, how you do it naturally without any force. Hopefully you will be right handed and right eye dominant or left handed and left eye dominant. The problems start to manifest themselves with right handed and left eye dominant or Left handed and right eye dominate situations. If you are right handed and try to line up the sights with your right eye but you are left eye dominant you are headed for a losing battle. This situation can be addressed with the scotch tape as described earlier in the thread. So why does it work?

If you are right handed and left eye dominant and you block with tape you force your right eye to take over. Why the tape in the first place instead of totally patching an eye? You will loose Peripheral vision and depth perception totally if you patch.

Basic question of why shoot with both eyes open to begin with? Depth perception and Peripheral vision. Your transitions from target to target will be quicker. Basically you can't shoot what you can't see. The faster you can identify a target the faster you can align your sights.

Sorry for the long ramble. Clay

[chp5]

Remember if u practice alot u will learn this quicker and develop the dominant eye!!!

Unless you don't have a dominant eye

L2S - we must have the same eyes. My eyes are exactly the same in strength and very close in dominance.

Optics or shotgun - I can use both eyes. Iron sighted pistols - I squint the left eye. I CAN shot a pistol with both eyes open, but I'm a lot slower and far less confident in what I see.

I wonder if there's such a thing as "learned dominance" - teaching you right eye (assuming you're right handed) to be more dominant.

I'll just keep squinting for now.

[Pierruiggi]

The problems start to manifest themselves with right handed and left eye dominant or Left handed and right eye dominate situations. If you are right handed and try to line up the sights with your right eye but you are left eye dominant you are headed for a losing battle. This situation can be addressed with the scotch tape as described earlier in the thread. So why does it work?

If you are right handed and left eye dominant and you block with tape you force your right eye to take over. 

I'm not sure about this. There are several proficient shooters who are cross dominant, among them our host, Brian Enos.

I agree with everything else.

[crovello]

I am glad to have gotten so many good tips on this issue but most of all I am glad to hear that I am not the only one uncomfortable shooting with both eyes open.

I try to work on these drills for a short time every night. I can pick up the sight picture much quicker while dry firing in my loading room but when I go to the range it is hard to stick with it. I can see it will take a long time before this comes naturally to me.

Now the hard part will be to stick with it and not go to what comes easy, witch is closing one eye. I think in the long run it will be worth the efort.

Dave

[MoNsTeR]

There are many ways to do this but one that I can explain is to make an OK sign with your fingers. Extend your arm out and look through the ''O" that you created with your thumb and index finger with both eyes open. Pick a small object on the other side of the room, a light switch the small light on the answering machine, whatever and center that object in the "O". Now close your left eye. Is the object still centered in the "O"? If it is you are right eye dominant. Try it again and this time close your right eye. Did the object come out of the "O"? Again you are right eye dominant. If you center it with both eyes open and close one eye and it stays centered the eye that is still open is your dominanat eye.

This doesn't work. If I focus on a distant object, there will be a double image of my hand. I can control the outcome of the test by choosing which image to use.

[Clay1]

Pierruiggi, This is the part that you may have missed: "If you are right handed and try to line up the sights with your right eye but you are left eye dominant you are headed for a losing battle."

If our host is cross eye dominant and he is right handed he probably lines up his sights with his left eye and keeps both eyes open. The part of the about the above is that you align the sights with your dominant eye or you will not be hitting were you are looking. It would be neat if Brian could step in an explain his technique, but he is a busy man I'm sure.

Monster, open both eyes to begin with and line up the object with both eyes open. Then close one eye at a time and see which one allows it to stay centered. It's probably my description of the technique more than the technique itself not working for you. Try again, and tell me what you think.

[Pierruiggi]

Yes Clay, I misread your post. Sorry.

[Tom Balko]

The "OK" process should work, but is hard to describe in text only. Try picking out your small target with both eyes open, but leave your hand low and out of your site picture. After you've got the target acquired, raise the "O" you've made with your thumb and finger somewhat quickly so that it encompasses your target. As soon as it's there, close the eye you normally close and see if the target stays in the "O". If it does, then you are sighting with the dominent eye. If it doesn't, the closed eye is dominent. You have to move these steps without a lot of hesitation, or things may get icky! I've not seen anyone not be able to accomplish this test,,,, but then I've never had to explain it in writing only. Good Luck!!

[MoNsTeR]

Tried it again, no dice. If your eyes are focused on an object in the distance, anything that comes between your eye and that object (ie: your hand making the O) will appear doubled. Conversely, if I focus on my hand, the distant object will be doubled. This is how our eyes work.

This is, in fact, the whole problem with using irons with both eyes open: double images are inevitable. This exercise helps illustrate the nature of the problem, but it can't show you which eye is dominant, because there is no "natural" alignment: once you're aware of the double image you can choose which eye to align.

[crovello]

The way I was told to tell witch eye is dominant is to hold your hands out at arms length. Bring your hands together forming a diamond between your two thumbs and index fingers. focus on a point in the distance. Slowly bring your hands to your face while kepping the point you are focused on in the center of the diamond. Your hands will move to your dominant eye.

Works for me any way

Dave

[Clay1]

Monster, thanks for trying it again. Most of us it works for. If you were in my living room with me I feel fairly confident that we could get it to work for you. Again, one of those things that is easy to do, but hard to put into words.

crovello, your way of making the diamond or triangle with the thumbs and the fingers is actually how I was taught as well, but that is harder to put into words on the hand positioning. I wish that we could post pictures on this site without using a third website. I've just never done that. Digital pictures are alway a help when trying to describe something.Try the following professionally written articles, they probably do a much better job of explaining things than I am doing:

http://www.peteblakeley.com/article2.doc

http://www.shoalriver.com/advice.htm

The above links are sporting clay specific but anyone who is having eye dominance questions might be able to glean some good information from the above. Do a search for eye dominance in shooting sports, or eye dominance is sporting clays and see what other sites you can find to help you out.

[Pierruiggi]

If your problem posting images is because of web space or bandwith, I recommend you to upload your images to http://www.imageshack.us ; if the problem is you don't know how to post an already uploaded image, PM or mail me.

[scooterj]

Some people don't have a dominant eye. A friend of mine says that he aims with the gun on the left when shooting with both eyes open. This works, for him, most of the time, but his eyes will shift on occasion.

[Rapt]

I'm a cross dominant shooter who has until now always just closed the dominant eye and shot with the "weak" eye.

The problem is as I get into this pistol stuff its a disadvantage. I'd love to know other's opinions on options...

Is it possible to change your dominant eye?

OR should I opt to line up with the dominant eye and shoot with both open?

I'd be curious to know what a top shooter like our host does. I know a GM in my area who was cross dominant who learned to shoot with the other hand to solve the problem. This seems like the last choice to me.

[George]

Just cant the gun to the strong eye. It's what I do when I weak hand shoot. I even cant slightly when I shoot "stronghand only" to bring the sights right in front of my strong eye. Canting doesn't bother the trajectory at typicl pistol ranges. It's also a lot better than tilting the head.

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Regards,

[wsimpso1]

I did the scotch tape trick, and recently removed it entirely. The big deal is just training the brain to not use the image of the front sight from the off side eye, and that takes time looking at the sights. I had tape on my glasses for my whole first season... Now I can do without the tape, and my speed on negotiating CoF and transitioning from target to target has noticiably improved.

Billski

[George]

BTW, I think Brian is cross-dominant too. And I believe he uses a little cant to line up the sights too. I know I picked up on the idea of canting the gun to the strong eye from his book.

BTW, BTW, you do not have to keep both eyes open when using cant to bring the sights in front of the dominant eye. The interesting thing for me was that doing this allowed me to stop squinting and keep both eyes open as it seemed to reduce the double view component a bit by having the sights right in front of the dominant eye.

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Regards,

[MoNsTeR]

I learned to shoot irons with both sights open this season just by forcing myself to do it. I had some crazy misses at first but now I've got the hang of it and I don't even think about it.

[iainmcphersn]

Same here Monster. I started while I was shooting groups which made it a little easier. Now I need to learn to keep my head straight...

[Rapt]

Actually I was thinking for both freestyle and SH/WH grips.

Right now I close my dominant eye to force my weak eye to do the work. The thing is I'm concerned I'm affecting my ultimate speed (of vision) by doing this.

[cking]

For those that use bifocals.

I got so I couldn't see the front sight sharp anymore without looking through the bifocal part of my lenses. I tried all kinds of different setups. I'll skip that I'm trying to forget how much money I wasted.

So here's what works for me. I was a close one eye shooter.

Got my glasses made so my dominant eye is focused on front sight, so essential the whole lenses is a bifocal power. The other eye is focused on infinity, or distant focus.

Now I shoot both eyes open, takes a while to train the brain. So now I can see my front sights, and if I need to I can look at the targets and see my holes also.

My shooting is back on course again, and this also works fine with my iron sights AR.