Experimentation - Vision Dominance and Alignment

[ubervic]

I am right-handed and have always been comfortable shooting with right-eye alignment and both eyes open. I'm getting older and my vision is not what it once was, and the degradation is more noticeable in my right eye, as confirmed by the prescription issued by my optician. This has been something of a limiting factor in terms of my speed and accuracy on certain targets.

With these factors in mind, yesterday I experimented with aligning my LEFT eye, rather than my RIGHT, with the front sight through the rear notch. I fired a few hundred rounds using this technique. The sight picture is definitely clearer & sharper. I just have to train myself to turn my head to my right and to raise the pistol more towards my left.

Anyone else try this and find it a long-term preference? Any drawbacks?

[ubervic]

Mods, this would probably sit better in the 'Marksmanship & Gun Handling' forum.

[critter]

Interesting topic.

I'm right handed, left eye dominant.. but learned to shoot with the right eye, both eyes open (forced by dad when I was like seven). We're in a similar situation. Left eye is in better shape than the right. I've tried making the switch several times but even after a few days of trying, I can't get the left eye lined up consistently even using the right arm cheek weld technique. I'm beginning to think it's an 'old dog, new trick' problem. It was relatively easy to switch from sight to target focus, but the eye switch is proving difficult. The drawback appears to be that I can't do it without taking two to three seconds just to get the left eye on the sights. Post up any tricks you come across!

[ubervic]

I stumbled more than once with the same conflict yesterday. I will have to see about practicing, as once I got the alignment dialed-in the results were good.

Will have to explore this for a while to see if it's possible to teach this ol' dog.

[critter]

On YouTube, Hickok45 is a right hand/left eye shooter. You might pick up a tidbit or two checking out his style if you haven't already.

[TAZ]

Same here. Right handed, but left eye dominant. Rx wise the left eye requires more correction, so I’m not sure that’s a good gauge. Make sure that you properly identify your dominant eye. Google some methods. Do this before you try to relearn everything. You could just have the wrong rx for your dominant eye. Getting rx done whoje tired, allergies... have an effect, as does the actual fabrication.

I started with the head tilt and such. Couldn’t get consistent. I also dont like having to turn my head. If you can, just raise the pistol as normal, keeping a level head. Then move the gun left till sights align. You may end up breaking your wrist a bit (slide won’t be aligned with forearm), but it shouldn’t cause much issue. Then practice the crap out of it. If you want to cheat till you get the movement down, smear the right lens of your glasses. Or put some scotch tape on it.

[CraigS]

RH and left dominant here too. Always have been. I can't shoot w/ both eyes open because I see two sets of sights and two bullseyes. So I close my right eye. I know this is not ideal but I see no option. My arm alignment looks like an arrow w/ the gun aligned pretty much equal angle to both forearms. Other than reduced peripheral vision to my right I am happy w/ how it works.

[Larry T]

Right-handed, mildly left-eye dominant, but I shoot right-eyed. I test left eye dominant 100% of the time, but the dominance difference is low, so I use my right eye. The issue I face is with both eyes open, the front sight is focused, the target is blurry and depending on distance, there's two targets (right-eyed means it's the target on the right) but correct rear sight is hard to see. There's two rear sights and the wrong one (left one) is easy to see but the left rear sight isn't as easy to see.

Gabe White's vision articles have a good visual about this.

[JohnO]

Larry Vickers is left eye dominate. He shoots a pistol right handed and turns his head to align his left eye. When Larry shoots a rifle he usually shoots left handed.

Mike Pannone due to the loss of his right eye turns his head to align his left eye with his sights shooting a pistol right handed. Mike uses an extra tall riser on his rifles so he can see his sight with his left eye shooting right handed. If Mike shoots a students rifle it will be left handed due to his limitation.

[ubervic]

Right-handed, mildly left-eye dominant, but I shoot right-eyed. I test left eye dominant 100% of the time, but the dominance difference is low, so I use my right eye. The issue I face is with both eyes open, the front sight is focused, the target is blurry and depending on distance, there's two targets (right-eyed means it's the target on the left) but correct rear sight is hard to see. There's two rear sights and the wrong one (left one) is easy to see but the left rear sight isn't as easy to see.

Gabe White's vision articles have a good visual about this.

I suddenly realized recently that when I'm under pressure to acquire a sight picture quickly, I naturally end up turning my head to my right and utilizing my left-eye vision to see sights.

Example, when training on reloads I had been sighting with my right eye (as normal), then dumping a magazine & reloading, then, as I fought to bring sights to target as quickly as possible, I noticed more times than not that I was sighting with my left eye----and with good results. The interesting thing is that this action was not intentional but instinctive. A light bulb went off. Yet, when I try to be more intentional with this action, my 'training' seems to want to fight the action. I am hopeful that this is simply a short-term quandary and that training going forward will ingrain my using my left eye 100%.