Right-Handed but Left Eye Dominant

[jjgun]

I'm helping a student get started in shooting AP and he is right-handed, but it turns out that he is left eye dominant. Are there any special considerations that need to addressed for this situation? Never encountered this before.

[2650 Plus]

I've had several instances of shooters with the problem you have described. Since I don't have the problem some of my response will be guess work. I made the assunption that it was more important to see the sights than to take the recoil straight down the shooters arm.I went to work modifing the grip until the sights were in natural allignment with the shooters eye. Then I tried to adjust the trigger so as to allow the shooter to apply pressure straight to the rear to avoid moving the sights with the trigger finger.I ran out of adjustment and ended up with a ball [ copied off the anshutz trigger] and that seem to have solved at least one more of the shooters problems. Please don't give up ! There must be some way to compensate for this problem. If you find something that really works please post. Good Shooting Bill Horton

[Gwhite]

I've always been of the opinion that it's OK to shoot most target disciplines "cross dominant" as long as the vision in the aiming eye is fundamentally sound. Yes, it's better if everything matches up, but shooting with the "off" hand can be a bigger compromise than shooting with a patch/blinder over your dominant eye. There are also many degrees of cross-dominance. Before a detached retina, my eyes were very well matched. My right eye was dominant, but not by much.

For pistol, shooting well requires good hand-eye coordination to keep the sights lined up, combined with fine muscle control to execute a good trigger squeeze. That has a lot more to do with the sort of muscle control your dominant hand has than the vision of the dominant eye. If you have the time, drive & resources, you can train & learn to shoot well with either hand, but you will probably master the basics a LOT faster with your dominant hand.

There are some people who will be adamant that you are wasting your time if you don't shoot with your dominant eye. I suggest that they consider the case of Károly Takács, who lost his right (shooting) arm in World War II, and won the gold medal in Rapid Fire in 1948 with his left hand. I haven't been able to find info on which eye he used when, but I strongly suspect he switched his aiming eye. It also shows that you CAN train either arm/hand to shoot well. I also know someone who re-trained their eyes by blocking the vision in the dominant eye for much of the day.

I suspect it is different for something like trap, skeet or running boar, where you want both eyes open to pick up moving targets.

[jjgun]

I know I should have checked eye dominance first thing, but whether it was CRS or something else I skipped over it and went right to stance, NPA, grip, etc. This is an interesting story. This 18 y/o young man has only shot AP 3 times now. I have him doing a lot of dry firing, of course, but to keep him interested I let him shoot a fair amount also. The first 2 times he shot he kept everything in the scoring rings maybe putting 3-4 shots in the black. I thought this was good for a beginner. Last night he shot a couple of targets with the same results, but then he shows me a target where all 10 shots are in the black and only 3 were 7's ! I asked him what he did and he said he closed his right eye instead of his left. I asked him to shoot another target and he did the same thing. I'm really impressed and think this kid has some potential. Could you imagine what he'd do if he closed both eyes. :-)

JJ

[2650 Plus]

As I considered the above posts two american shooters came to mind. One was Harry Reaves, the Detroit police officer and 4 or 5 times national champion who was reported to be the first to break 2600 with both hands, and we just had another shoot a score over 2640 in our inter service matches shooting with the [wrong] left hand. Come to think of it there is another. My Father in law did the trick when his right hand deteriated to the point that he was forced to change hands and was a member of a service pistol team that won our national match. I still believe that a shooter should shoot with his / her master eye and make the compromise with the grip. Good Shooting Bill Horton

[OzzieM]

All my life I was right handed and right eye dominant. Over the years my right eye deteriorated to the point where vision can not be corrected, due to a 40 year old injury. To be able to continue shooting AP I changed earlier this year to aiming with my left eye by taping over my right eye lens. Within two to three weeks it felt natural to aim with my left eye.

But, I did not like the new stance I had to adopt, so I decided to try and train also for left handed shooting. I shot my right handed pistol left handed for about two months, matching my former shooting scores within the first month. In the meantime I have changed my pistol grip to a left handed one. My scores are now marginally better than they were when I shot right handed, right eyed. During this period, to strengthen my left shoulder, arm and wrist, I did light weight exercises most days while watching televison news.

I am 66 years old. Imagine how quickly a young person could manage a radical switch from left to right, or vice versa.

Hope this helps,

OzzieM

[Aus Guest]

Similar story to OzzieM.
Broke my right hand 2 years ago. Kept going to the range to socialise and with Club Championships being shot thought why not try left handed.
Covered my right eye and shot air, free, 25m and std. Was within 20-40pts of my PB's in all matches, dualing and 10sec I found the most difficult.
Slowfire was simply a case of following my normal shot procedure with left hand and eye. Air and 50m had the added problem of being shot with righthanded grips.
The results with no previous experience left handed no preperation and or training and right handed grips did make me think about continuing with my left hand.

[paw080]

Hi Guys, I'm cross dominant and I don't consider it any kind of problem.
My lousy scores are a result of lousy training attitude. I also shoot with both
eyes open, no squinting required. Please don't try to force a dominance
correction. We tend to have a more frontal stance, but not much really.
I'm gonna try a Rink grip with 7 degree offset, but really, I've got a regular
offset Rink grip on my Steyr LP1 and I simply pivot the AP very slightly
to accomodate the left eye dominance. I don't see that cross dominance is
as big a problem as many shooters think it is.

Tony G

[Dr. Jim]

I am one of those unfortunates as well, but for 35 years I shot by assuming a completely "open" stance - feet directly at right angle to the target, chin on right shoulder, and thus could look straight down the arm and sights. For short periods I have tried to use the subordinate eye, but always have come back to the left master. Currently I stand in a less open position about 30 degrees rotated towards the target - arthritis in the neck has made it impossible to maintain the fully open posture - but I have not changed sight settings or grip structure - still works! Can't say the same for my scores, but then it's only a few of us in the "veteran" class.
There are always ways to overcome the cross-dominant situation, and they don't necessarily involve shifting to the "weak" arm.

--Dr Jim

[vern]

I too have a dominant left eye and am right handed, though I have never considered it a problem in my chosen sport!!!

I use a 7 degree offset rink grip on my morini 162EI. a number of offset grips are available for recent models of pistol which makes me think this right hand / left eye situation is fairly common.

What I have found lately though is that I am now at an age (44) where my previously perfect eyesight is starting to fail, and my once dominant left eye if failing more rapidly than my right. I persevered with my left eye as my sighting eye until just recently when the sight picture was getting just too blury after about 40 shots, so I changed the blind over to the left side of my shooting frames and used my right eye with immediate and dramticallly improved results!!!

My left eye is still dominant, but I get a better sight picture with my right eye, so I am now actively retraining myself to shoot right hand / right eye.

I probably should visit an optometrist to see if there is anything that can be done with correcting lenses, but Im shooting pretty good!!!!

[TB]

I am right handed and left eye dominant and I do not have a problem with this at all. I always just use a blinder for my left eye and aimed with my right and this works very well. I find it very exadurated to say that you must aim with your dominant eye at any cost. If you are cross dominant the benefits by using the dominant eye are close to none and much less than the drawbacks. Rapid fire shooting will be a big problem and using your "wrong" arm even bigger.

Off course this is just my opinion and an interesting discussion this is.

[PeteinMelb]

Vern, you are just getting old mate. Happens to all of us 20:20 vision types somewhere in our 40s. Visit an optometrist who knows guns with your longest and shortest guns and get a lens for shooting glasses.

Make sure you check the script in the "test" lens before he makes your lens. You can do this by reading some very small writing stuck on a wall using the length of your arm with the gun in it. Move back and forward and check that the writing is in sharp focus at the foresight distance, it is very easy to set it up for the rear sight for some reason. I needed to compromise a bit as the optimal lens for 50 metre wasn't quite right for standard.

Try to make sure the light when you are doing this is about what you experience on a range too, nice bright lights in the opticians make everything look good, but a trip to a typically dull shooting bay shows the problems and by then you have blown the cost. Medicare covers an eye test every 2 years by the way and a coated lens for my Knoblochs cost me $80.