So long as we are talking about eyes: has anyone here switched eyes/dominance?

Background: I'm 15 weeks out from having surgery to repair a significantly detached retina in my dominant eye. While the procedure (scleral buckle) certainly saved my eyesight, it also had the effect of really messing up my vision. Prior to my detachment, I was strongly right eye dominant. During healing, and before getting an updated script, my brain just switched to left eye dominant (since I can't see the sights uncorrected with my dominant eye).

Best I can get is about 20/50 corrected, which has led to an interesting phenomenon: with glasses I had made specifically for focus/enhancement at 25.5" (distance from my dominant eyeball to the front sight of a G17 at full extension), I can see the sights well enough that my innate dominance takes over, although it's not superb. I can still get hits, and figured that was just the cost of doing business as an aging shooter. With my distance script, however, it's sort of a toss up, and herein lies the reason for the thread: with my daily wear glasses and dry fire drills, I find I can mentally phase back and forth between my innate dominance and left eye dominance, because my left is much clearer. I can do this with the finger-up-against the fixed object test as well. Trippy.

My left eye has a very mild script: I can see well enough to drive without correction, and with a mild correction, I'm a crystal clear 20/20. If I just close my dominant eye and use my left eye, all of a sudden it's like being 25 years old again: I'm at the range with a stock 3" model 65, and I'm thinking "holy shit, there's still serrations on that stainless front sight".

Choices are to either just go with my innate dominance, and make do--with the understanding that if I lose my glasses, I'll be shooting left eye regardless, or; I could bag my "shooting" script altogether, and force/train/will myself to switch eyes and become a cross-dominant shooter, with all the visual acuity and "die hard"-era Bruce Willis cool that technique offers.

Sort of a specialized post, I realize, but there's a lot of experience and smarts on this board, so I figured I might as well throw it out there for discussion.

Thanks in advance, folks.

Kinda neat that you had an automatic switch like that but no, I haven't. If it comes naturally use whatever eye works best that your brain likes, aside from shooting trap or rifle irons left eye dominance isn't even a mild issue. Even when you do those things it's a whopping exhausting squint of the right eye to get back to shooting.



As far as talking about eyes in general I have green ones and they're beautiful.

I'm 73 and was right eye dominant until a few years ago. Now my rt eye is 20/40 and the left is 20/20. I 've tried using the left eye but so far it hasn't made much difference. I shoot about the same with either at closer ranges, 10 yards and 7 yards. Where it's made a big difference is with a shotgun. Takes a few more shells or more than a few some days to get my limit on doves but I'm not going to the trouble to change to shooting from the left side at my age as I usually shoot autoloaders.

Yes, I started out 30 years ago with pistols as a cross-dominant shooter. I was right-handed but left-eye dominant. In 1999, I experienced an episode of CRVO in my dominant left eye. I lost sight in that eye. While the sight eventually returned, my vision in the left eye lacks fine detail: I cannot make out the front sight on a service pistol. I made a conscious effort to use my right eye exclusively although I do not think I ever really switched dominance. It took me a couple of years to get the hang of it; this effort consumed 5 or 6 thousand rounds downrange. I have been confident with it since that time. I align the right eye with the front sight without thinking. Do I shoot better? No, I do not. But I manage as well as I did before the medical incident.

For years I've shot pistol with my right eye because I am right hand dominant.

I still default to my right away under stress out of learned reflex.

I am left eye dominant and shoot noticeably more accurately with my left eye - referring to accuracy standards like the 200 drill.

You can teach yourself to switch eyes, though I do not know how accurate you will be.

Thanks guys.

To follow up on this, I've been doing press outs daily to make an effort to ingrain alignment with what is now my good eye. Of course, given that some of my earliest memories are working the hammer and trigger of a Ruger single-six while my dad controlled it, I've got some conditioning to evercome. Example: first draw at the range yesterday, and for a split second, I'm wondering why the front sight is so hard to see until I realized that I had defaulted. The rest of the session went great; I can be every bit as accurate with my offside eye as I ever was with my dominant. I'm going to give it some daily dry rep, and about 3 years and see where I am at. Not much choice, really, but I'm pretty sure I can learn to make it reflexive just by doing enough reps to supplant old presentation with new.

I'm optimistic.

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Originally Posted by Sidheshooter

Thanks guys.

To follow up on this, I've been doing press outs daily to make an effort to ingrain alignment with what is now my good eye. Of course, given that some of my earliest memories are working the hammer and trigger of a Ruger single-six while my dad controlled it, I've got some conditioning to evercome. Example: first draw at the range yesterday, and for a split second, I'm wondering why the front sight is so hard to see until I realized that I had defaulted. The rest of the session went great; I can be every bit as accurate with my offside eye as I ever was with my dominant. I'm going to give it some daily dry rep, and about 3 years and see where I am at. Not much choice, really, but I'm pretty sure I can learn to make it reflexive just by doing enough reps to supplant old presentation with new.

I'm optimistic.

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Good luck with your new approach.

Please keep us up to date as there are many in the same situation.

I'm right handed/left eye dominant. While pistol shooting I like up the sights with my dominant/left eye. When rifle or shotgun shooting, I shoot right handed/right eye 90% of the time. Conventional wisdom says I "should" shoot left handed, and I will during unique circumstances. If I'm shooting my 20" AR with irons at distance, I'll shoot lefty. Same with my iron sight AKs and other iron sight rifles. If I'm shooting with an optic, either magnified or RDS, I'll shoot righty.

Wing/clay shooting is a little different; I shoot righty but wear a baseball cap with a pretty generous bend in the bill. When I place my cheek to the stock and look down the barrel at the bead, the bill of my hat blocks my dominant/left eye from seeing the bead. What I end up with is my right eye looking down the barrel, at the bead and ultimately at the target. It works for me. Can also shoot my iron sight rifles this way but I lose a bit of peripheral vision, hence why I shoot iron rifles lefty.

Kind of.
Early this year I had mono-vision Lasik done.
My dominant right eye was corrected to 20/20 and my left eye was corrected to be just slightly nearsighted to account for my age and allow me to read and use a computer without glasses.
While this is awesome in daily life (nor more corrective lenses at all) it kind of screwed me on my handgun shooting under certain conditions.
My 20/20 right eye now makes handgun sights just slightly fuzzy, they're clear enough for speed work but precision is a bitch and 3-dot night sights are a blurry mess at night.

With handguns I've learned to transition which eye I'm using depending on the shot.
At speed I just shoot right eye dominant like I always have and can get hits on a 3x5 card at 15Y like I always have (99 Drill).
When I'm really bearing down for a precision shot, say a 3x5 card folded in half at 25Y I just shift my head slightly right and get razor sharp sight focus from my slightly nearsighted left eye.
I've worked at lot of drill at 25Y to make the as seamless as possible.
I'll shoot 2 fast into the A "normally" (both eyes open, right eye dominant), then switch to left eye dominant, right eye partially closed as I transition to two precise head A shots.

To make things better under low light I switched to Straight-8 night sights instead of 3-dot. The Straight-8's are still blurry but it's easier to stack two blurry dots vertically than line up 3 horizontally.
The two smaller dots also "bloom" less than the 3 dots so it's a smaller green blur to deal with.

Great info, Jody, thanks for that.

Do you still have to think about the transition for precision, or has it become reflexive if you need to take a longer shot?