Eye Dominance while shooting

[rkelly]

I shoot right handed, but am left eye dominant. It doesn't seem to bother me much while hunting, but does while shooting trap. Anybody ever try the EasyHit Tom Knapp shotgun site? It says it helps with eye dominance issues.

[Greg Jennings]

Put some Scotch tape on the left shooting glass lens such that it is between your left eye and the most, if not all, of the shotgun barrel including most importantly the front. The tape should be the frosted kind, not clear.

Another interesting solution that I've heard about but not tried is to use chap stick in place of the frosted tape.

If that doesn't work for you, then go to an opaque dot like is used for price labels.

Greg J.

[hear duck]

I have the same issue with dominance as you do and the tom knapp site helped. After many years of shooting like this, I decided to take a shooting lesson to see if i should shoot left handed. What we found out my poor shooting was mainly due to mechanics. I had a fast swing and would often shoot in front of the target. We also worked on aquiring the target and then pull forward for the shot. We worked on keeping both eyes opening and then closing down an eye right before pulling the trigger. He said that most dominant shoters like to point so go ahead and point and follow the target. By the end of the lesson I was knocking the clays like never before.

[Mountaineer]

There are folks with true off-eye dominance but many simply have eye dominance issues from fatigue or certain target presentations.
As a right-handed Trapshooter, I thought I was left eye dominant and wore a patch for several years...now I do not need it...my dominant eye has strengthened.
Try a patch before any gimmick like the EasyHit....one such as that can, just can, cause you to focus on the front sight which is what you do not want to do....ever.
If Trap targets are giving you a problem it may well be the angles thrown and certain targets are most easily picked up by the off eye...not necessarily is it a true dominance issue. Favoring a different hold point or different hold height may also help not allow targets to get a jump.

But, and this from my experience, consider not using tape or any other temporary fix that smears.
Doing that makes the area blanked out on your glasses way too large and can introduce other problems.
A good size would be a opaque patch of about the size of a #2 pencil erasure...a dot of that size requires precise placement but works best.
The MagicDot is fine but too large.
Use the black placement dot provided in the Magic Dot kit and cut a very small hole in the center. Use that hole on the outside of your glass lens as a peep to center the front sight from your off eye.
Once positioned, place the very small cut-down dot(I punch out the small dot with a 30-06 cartridge case or a 35 whelen) over it on the inside of the lens.
This will blank out only the front sight and make walking easier...it is almost unnoticable when worn.
It will also aid in making sure the gun is correctly mounted.
Registered Trap rerquires shooting with a mounted gun for best success and so this small dot will work best...if you want to shoot gun down on another clay game then a slightly(slightly) larger dot may work better as the mount is often less consistent.

Actually, almost anything will seem to make an improvement when first tried but some fixes will not work well longterm, in rain or heat or sweat or they will introduce other issues for which you may have to deal with down the road.

[BigShooter]

One of the issues affecting eye dominance is the quality of vision in each eye. For a right handed person for example your right eye may have poorer vision due to any number of reasons not the least of which is astigmatism. Even for those who wear corrective lenses, vision in one eye may be corrected extremely well while the eye that should be dominant simply cannot be corrected to crystal clarity. The brain interprets the image projected on the retina & can make amazing changes, such as switching dominance to the eye with the best vision.

As an example, some time ago the army conducted a vision experiment where they were successful in getting subjects to have their brains take upside down images and convert (or see) them as upright images.

I'm convinced that in a number of instances the brain has switched dominance to the eye with the clearest vision. One option to consider would be any surgery (like Lasik) that could successfully create clearer vision in the eye that should be dominant accompanied by a retraining regimen or dot such as Mountaineer suggested to strengthen the use of the correct eye.

[BDBUzi]

My left eye is dominate and has always had much worse vision than my right eye, including astigmatism.
I've shot pretty well with my old pump, but the new SxS is a little tougher to adjust to.

This thread is very interesting to me.

[BigShooter]

Interesting. Of course some astigmatism is well corrected with lenses and some is not. Assuming you wear corrective lenses then you would obviously know which eye has the best corrected central vision during an eye exam. How did you determine your left eye is dominant?

I do as at least one famous shotgunner does. I raise the gun with both eyes open and close the dominant left eye just before pulling the trigger (I'm right handed). It is an imperfect solution for me.

Here is one of several articles that talks about some of the reasons why we can have mixed eye dominance and also reasons why eye dominance can move to the eye on the wrong side due to vision, alignment or convergence issues: http://www.healingpathwaysmedical.com/d ... opment.pdf

[ncpointers]

I find it interesting reading the different techniques used to correct the issue, be it dominance or eye strength. I was taught to shoot right handed as a youth shooting skeet once a week outside of hunting season and did not figure out that I was left eye dominent until I was 17. I retrained myself to shoot left handed and have no more issues but that was a long year of learning. My father could not believe that I was able to switch for the longest time but as I improved my shooting, he became a believer. After 20 + years of shooting lefthanded, I still occasionally try right handed and it feels completely wrong even though I do everything else in the world as a right hander.

[BDBUzi]

... How did you determine your left eye is dominant?

I do as at least one famous shotgunner does. I raise the gun with both eyes open and close the dominant left eye just before pulling the trigger (I'm right handed). It is an imperfect solution for me.

...

I found out in our state's Hunter Safety class about 20 years ago. They had us do some simple exercises to determine eye dominance. I tried shooting left handed for a little while at my instructors recommendation, but I shot so much better right-handed, and needed to pass the shooting test to get my license, so I stuck with it. Interestingly, I shoot a bow much better left handed.

I'm going to give your method a shot and close the dominate eye just before firing.
Thanks for the tip.