Having trouble focusing on the front sight.

[XxMerlinxX]

I could use some help in overcoming this problem.

I'm right handed and right eye dominant, but here's the catch. When trying to focus on the front sight, I often end up seeing it from my non-dominant eye, which is my left. My sight picture ends up looking somewhat similar to this.

Is there any way to overcome this?

[CHA-LEE]

Slightly close your non-dominant eye so the only thing you can see are things through that eye from an unfocused peripheral perspective. Doing this will still enable you to see things peripherally with your non-dominant eye (better than fully closing that eye) and it will also force your dominant eye to be leveraged for seeing your sights.

[Dwight Stearns]

Or use target focus.

[CHA-LEE]

Or use target focus.

Have fun with that plan of attack on 20+ yard partial targets. You can get away with a hard target focus out to a limited distance but beyond that you are only hoping that your hits will be there. That and not observing the sights makes it impossible to effectively call your shots

[Dwight Stearns]

I Never said to not observe the sights. It is possible to focus on the target and concentrate on the sight picture at the same time.

[Willz]

I Never said to not observe the sights. It is possible to focus on the target and concentrate on the sight picture at the same time.

Go on...I'm listening.

[leath4m]

I shot for a few weeks with a target patch on the left lense of my shooting glasses, then progressed to no lense but found I could blink the double image out when needed, same as suggested above. Now I'm fine, it was like eye exercise.

[alma]

Try a little piece of masking tape in the center of your left lense.

[Hi-Power Jack]

I'm right eye dominant, but When trying to focus on the front sight, I often end up seeing it from my left.

I wonder if that means that you're left eye dominant?

[Dwight Stearns]

I Never said to not observe the sights. It is possible to focus on the target and concentrate on the sight picture at the same time.

Go on...I'm listening.

Target focus is actually easier than front sight focus because it is what we do naturally hundreds of thousands of times every day. When we drive, walk, or play sports we use target focus. Now the big question is can it be used while shooting. I am pushing 60, wear glasses, and have long since lost the ability to focus on the front sight without the use of a special prescription. As I am still a law enforcement officer (semi-retired) and do armed prisoner transports, I still have to shoot accurately with my normal prescription. I do it by using target focus. Here is how.

First I use two types of focus. Visual focus (target) and mental focus or concentration. Even though I am visually focused on the target, I am concentrating on seeing an acceptable sight picture. The front sight is fuzzy but I can still see if it is aligned in the fuzzy rear sight window.

Second thing is I found I need some form of front sight enhancement. Fiber optic works great for me.

Third, I found I need a large amount of light around my front sight. I ended up with a .075 front sight with .040 fiber with a normal Bomar type rear sight in my competition guns. (I went with a .090 Dawson for a stronger sight for my duty gun). I was worried at first about precision with so much daylight but found there was no issues for me.

Now I don't advocate everyone doing this. It doesn't work for everyone but it does for me. Those that say a person can't be precise doing this are wrong. You can. You can also be fast.

If I was shooting bulls-eye I would get a special prescription so I could attain front sight focus. I do believe front sight focus is more precise. This isn't bulls-eye and about the toughest shot I have seen in a long time is head targets at about 25 yards. Front sight focus is precise enough for that.

Dwight

[JMike]

I'm right eye dominant, but When trying to focus on the front sight, I often end up seeing it from my left.

I wonder if that means that you're left eye dominant?

That is exactly what I was thinking.

[Jshuberg]

You may actually be left eye dominant, or your dominance may be weak or slight, and your mind is switching which eye is dominant from time to time. Either is perfectly normal, but rather than resorting to tape or other tricksie things, I'd recommend training yourself to control the slider in you mind that fades between which eye is dominant, and solve the problem in your head rather than with hardware.

The first thing to recognize is that eye dominance is very different from hand dominance. With your hands, you actually use one hand more often, and for more fine grained and controlled actions. It's about motor control, and the number of synapses in the motor cortex in the brain. It's also about muscle strength, dexterity, flexibility, and the like. There are physical reasons why one hand is more dominant than the other. Contrast this with vision. Unless a person has an injury or serious deformation or impairment of the eye, there is very little if any difference between the muscles that control the eyes. One eye is not "stronger" than the other. It's simply a matter of which eye the mind prefers to favor. It's a difference of sensory input vs motor control. Provided their aren't any physical impairment of the eyes, it is in fact *much* easier to learn to become ambidextrous with vision than it is with the hands. It just requires training.

The following is a technique that I developed for dominance training. Go to the store and pick up some red, blue and white colored standard 8.5x11 paper, make the following, and tape it to the wall at eye height:

I call this a Dominance Training Aid. Stand a few feet in front of it and cross your eyes so that the plus symbols overlap with each other. You perceive 3 pluses when you do this, the left one on a blue background, the right one on a red background, and the center plus will likely be on the background color of the eye that is currently dominant. The center one may also be both red and blue, a particular shade of purple, it may shift between red and blue as you look at it, or there may be a "tearing" pattern across it where some of it is red and some of it is blue. Whatever you perceive, this is how your mind is currently stitching together the images from your right and left eyes into a single perceived image.

By crossing your eyes and using the plus symbols to overlap the images as closely as possible you are able to perceive exactly how your brain is stitching the images together into a single perceived image. Crossing your eyes also is very unusual, so your mind will be less resistant to changing which eye is dominant while they are crossed since you've basically confused the heck out of it. The result is that while looking at this Dominance Training Aid with crossed eyes, you can more easily alter which eye is currently dominant and how the images are being stitched together by the mind, and also get instantaneous feedback as to what those changes are and what they actually look like. It's a very powerful tool for learning to control how your mind mixes your binocular vision together into a single perceived image.

I can't really describe how to shift the slider in your head from one eye to the other, except to say that for me it feels like I slide between which eye I'm "leading" with. It actually feels like the eye which is currently being favored is actually out in front of the other one slightly. For me, by switching which eye is "out front", which eye I'm "pushing forward", I can switch between which eye is currently dominant. What I perceive is that the background of the center plus switches from red to blue depending on which eye is being favored. I can actually get them to mix into various purplish red/blue colors when fading between eyes.

What you perceive, and how it feels for you may be different from what I or anyone else perceives, but try the "leading" technique above. Try partially closing one eye or the other. Try any number of things to cause a change in how the images are stitched together in your mind, and you'll see the result of it instantaneously. If you do this every morning for a couple minutes, when you eyes and mind are fresh, it wont take very long and you'll be able to very easily do this on demand. At that point try it out in the world without crossing your eyes, with your thumb, the sights on your gun, etc. You'll likely discover you have this very cool new skill that can be brought to bear not just when shooting, but any time more control over your binocular vision comes in handy.

After you've mastered shifting the background color of the center image of the DTA, stick your thumb up in front of you while looking at something in the distance. You will see two thumbs, a doubled image. You should be able to put the thumb that's seen with your (normally) dominant eye over the top of the object in the distance, and be able to shift your thumb from being entirely solid, to being almost completely transparent on demand. Then try it with the thumb as seen with your (normally) non-dominant eye, put it over the object in the background and change it's transparency. You may have to work at it a bit, but eventually you'll be able to use either eye as your primary eye for viewing, and be able to change the transparency level of double-image objects (like thumbs and gun sights) on demand.

One extremely powerful use of this skill is when using an ACOG or other magnified scope with a brightly illuminated reticle. This is known as the Bindon Aiming Concept (BAC). When preferring your right eye (for a right handed shooter) with both eyes open, you'll simply perceive the magnified image through the scope with the reticle, and your mind will drop the image from your left eye (despite it being open) from your perceived image. When you switch to favoring your left eye you'll perceive what it sees, and your mind will drop the magnified image from your right eye (despite it being open). Here's the cool part - when favoring your left eye, and your mind is dropping the magnified image being seen by your right eye, the reticle as seen by the right eye is still stitched into the perceived image of what is being viewed by the left eye. Because it's brightly illuminated, the mind will always include the reticle regardless of which eye you are favoring. The effect is that you can switch between 0x and 4x magnification entirely within your head, simply by switching between which eye the mind is currently favoring. All the while perceiving the illuminated reticle for aiming purposes. This is a very powerful visual technique as it effectively turns a fixed power scope into a variable power scope without having to manipulate or adjust the scope in any way.

https://www.trijicon.com/na_en/company/unique_to_trijicon.php

A word of caution when using the Dominance Training Aid above - I suspect that keeping your eyes crossed for an extended length of time can cause both physical and mental stress, so don't do this for more than a couple minutes at a time. If you experience any headaches or eye fatigue as a result, stop doing this. I'm not a doc, so don't go straining your eyes and blaming me. Be smart, if it hurts, don't do it!

So anyways, I don't know if this will solve your problem, but it certainly sounds like your eye dominance is shifting around underneath you, so you may as well learn to control it and leverage the technique for your benefit.

Hope this helps!

Edited August 22, 2014 by Jshuberg

[Willz]

Owww my eyes!

[Powder Finger]

Try a little piece of masking tape in the center of your left lense.

magic tape so you don't block light transmission.

and only put it where it just blocks the front of the gun/front sight not target.