TargetTalk

There is a junior shooter in my club who shoots without a blinder. She is very talented and in 9th grade is already shooting 550-560 in smallbore and 380 in air. Any thoughts on whether this is acceptable or we should advise she learn to use it?

A blinder is just an aid to teach them to shot with both eyes open, and not be distracted from a ghost image of the target. Many get rid of the blinder once they become used to focusing on the front sight.

Ideally, you want to shoot with a translucent blinder, not an opaque one. Your pupils dilate relative to available light, but you do not have the ability to dilate them independently. If one sees light and one sees dark, they both dilate to somewhere in-between. So if you have a dark blinder, it will cause your shooting eye to over dilate.

ShootingSight wrote:Ideally, you want to shoot with a translucent blinder, not an opaque one. Your pupils dilate relative to available light, but you do not have the ability to dilate them independently. If one sees light and one sees dark, they both dilate to somewhere in-between. So if you have a dark blinder, it will cause your shooting eye to over dilate.

Unless you have a head injury! ;)~

I use a blinder, because I'm shooting with my non-dominant eye. Blinders can be cobbled from one gallon plastic milk jugs, just keep an eye on the size limits in place by some sanctioning bodies. If the kid is already shooting well without it, and hasn't mentioned "seeing double", then I don't know if I'd complicate things by adding a blinder.

Exactly right - one of the symptoms that emergency people look for in brain injuries is if your eye pupils are different sizes, and if they are, it isn't good ....

I think something similar holds true for eye alignment. We can all move our eyes left/right independently, so they can both look left if we want to see left, or one can look left while the other looks right if we hold something close and they need to converge. However up/down adjustment of the eyes can only be done in unison. Since both eyes can move up and down, I imagine this is not a physical limitation, but simply a skill we have never learned, so I practice occasionally to see if I can do it. No luck so far.

My favorite way to deal with blinders is to just use a little piece of transparent scotch tape on your shooting glasses - it is frosty without being opaque. No issues with size or milk jugs. If you are a little careful in application, you can actually get away with a relatively small piece that obstructs your target view enough with your non-shooting eye to work, and yet when you tip your head, you can still look around the tape spot to see in your spotting scope, notebook, sight settings, etc.

Thanks for the replies. I appreciate you taking the time.