Eric1231 Posted January 15, 2017 Share Posted January 15, 2017 When shooting are suppose to shoot with one open or two eyes and why? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DKnoch Posted January 15, 2017 Share Posted January 15, 2017 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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yz125mm700 Posted January 15, 2017 Share Posted January 15, 2017 .Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JimmyBob Posted January 15, 2017 Share Posted January 15, 2017 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eric1231 Posted January 15, 2017 Author Share Posted January 15, 2017 Uspsa Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MemphisMechanic Posted January 15, 2017 Share Posted January 15, 2017 (edited) 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 January 15, 2017 by MemphisMechanic Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigcalidave Posted January 19, 2017 Share Posted January 19, 2017 Two eyes, see everything happening around you like when you are walking, playing other sports, etc. You'll need that! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CrashDodson Posted January 19, 2017 Share Posted January 19, 2017 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LabMan Posted January 19, 2017 Share Posted January 19, 2017 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
B585 Posted January 31, 2017 Share Posted January 31, 2017 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SlvrDragon50 Posted January 31, 2017 Share Posted January 31, 2017 I've got a piece of tape over my left lens. It helps quite a bit, but I still see the ghosting 2nd image. Some people here claim to have been able to train out of the cross dominance, but I don't know how severe their case was. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JAustin316 Posted February 2, 2017 Share Posted February 2, 2017 I've had to place scotch tape over the non dominant eye to get used to shooting with both eyes open as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toeheadAR Posted April 11, 2017 Share Posted April 11, 2017 This is the first time I've heard of the tape trick. I'll have to look through the forum to see if there is any two eye open training techniques. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jmtyndall Posted April 12, 2017 Share Posted April 12, 2017 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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MotorMouth Posted June 16, 2017 Share Posted June 16, 2017 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... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ozy Posted June 28, 2017 Share Posted June 28, 2017 Shoot with both eyes open ,but more accurate on long distance shots, with my weak eye closed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rowdyb Posted June 28, 2017 Share Posted June 28, 2017 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eureka1911 Posted July 1, 2017 Share Posted July 1, 2017 I do both. I shut my mostly weak eye when actually pulling the trigger, and when moving, reloading, etc. I have both eyes open. It's not like once you close one eye you can never open it again!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davidb72 Posted July 9, 2017 Share Posted July 9, 2017 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikeinctown Posted July 11, 2017 Share Posted July 11, 2017 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davidb72 Posted July 11, 2017 Share Posted July 11, 2017 I can imagine that being cross eye dominant would make it much more difficult. Good luck! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrT_shootsAcz Posted July 25, 2017 Share Posted July 25, 2017 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! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JacobThomas Posted August 3, 2017 Share Posted August 3, 2017 Two eyes here! I am right eyed dominant, but shoot left handed. I always see 2 sets of sights. i just try my best to focus on the fiber with my left eye and try to ignore the other fiber in sight. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tattooo Posted August 3, 2017 Share Posted August 3, 2017 Its weird for me ....I mostly shoot one eyed with the exception of a red dot on a handgun. I pick it up faster with both eyes. I know 2 eyed is better for field of view and really need to work on it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CrashDodson Posted August 3, 2017 Share Posted August 3, 2017 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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