I have a difficult time with front sight focus: nondominant eye

[JCN]

When shooting irons, if I try and front sight focus I get double sights.

3 dot sights are especially problematic. I see a bunch of different dots.

It’s my non-dominant eye bringing in information and goes away when I squint the left eye.

I thought it was going to be a mess when I shot a match with irons…

But it never happened.

Turns out that I primarily shoot irons target focused or intermediate focused. The harder I target focus, the clearer my irons become (when both eyes wide open).

It’s how I learned to shoot (target focused dot) and irons were always really hard for me to get along with when I tried adding in front sight hard focus.

I don’t know if it’s the way I’m wired or because I spend so much time with dots. But I have a very hard time converging with front sight focus… but have had luck with target focused irons.

I know @Clusterfrack target focuses irons and I think the commonality is that you need a pretty good mechanical index to be able to do it effectively.

[LukeNCMX]

I have a had a similar experience. Years back pre-red dot I was shooting irons with always some degree of fuzzy bumps and clear target because it was the only way I could both resolve the sights and track what I was aiming for. With lots of time on the red dot my eyes have developed where I can get better sight definition sooner with simultaneous sharper target focus.

[fatdog]

May be more of a blessing than a curse. I did a half day "performance tune up" with Frank Proctor last fall and he is an advocate of target focus for both irons and dots. Overcoming 35+ years of competitive shooting with 110% hard front sight focus is THE thing that has been the hardest for me in adopting dots the last couple of years and trying to move to target focus.

I am now pretty sure having good index discipline from being a dot shooter is helpful in all of this.

[SecondsCount]

I'm nearsighted and correct it with correction lenses. This moves my focus out and I become farsighted.

To solve the issue, I look through the rear sight, and put the fuzzy blob known as the front sight in the middle of the crystal clear target. It works well enough to make A-zone hits at 25 yards.

[CraigS]

I am right handed left eye dominate and I front sight focus w/ the dominant eye. I just close my right eye so I don't get the two sets of sights like you see. I understand that I may be losing a bit or peripheral vision but that has never been a problem. I will have to try the target focus as an experiment. I know that in matches w/ a close target, say 15ft or less I do at least somewhat target focus as I see the sights bouncing up and down but it is like the gun is there but it is kind of semi clear while the target is full definition.

[Elwin]

I have a similar issue because my formative shooting was clays and live birds. I practiced a lot starting at 11 years old and got rather good with shotguns before I first touched a pistol at 15 or so. Target focus is natural for me and works up until I’m trying to hit the black of a B8 at 25, then I need to squint the left eye and have at least more front sight focus even if it’s not 100% “hard” front sight focus. My struggle is forcing myself to do that when the shot requires it - my brain really, really wants to target focus.

I know DB has posted before about shotgunners being problem students for pistol. My experience tracks that, but I’ve learned to shoot decently without ingraining a hard front sight focus. That just has a limit for me when I hit certain combinations of target size and distance.

I’m working towards sending slides off to mill for dots and I’m excited to try something that allows me to work with my brain instead of against it. If it further improves my irons shooting as well, even better.

[JohnO]

3 dot sights are especially problematic. I see a bunch of different dots.

Remove all distractions from the rear sight. Black only, no color present to draw the visual focus to the rear sight.

[PNWTO]

I am right handed left eye dominate and I front sight focus w/ the dominant eye. I just close my right eye so I don't get the two sets of sights like you see. I understand that I may be losing a bit or peripheral vision but that has never been a problem.

I’m the same way; left-eyed righty.

The matter came up at a Defoor class I was attending. The student who asked presented all the usual changes that are sometimes suggested. Kyle basically laughed it off and, to paraphrase, said “it isn’t sexy for social media but I know a lot of legit .gov dudes who just squint or close their eye and, big surprise, it works.”

Moving to a target focus has helped me; albeit I don’t shoot as much as I used to so I’m still refining a good fry fire regime.

[LukeNCMX]

There are lots of great observations in this thread!

I am cross eye dominant (right handed, left eye) but I've experimented in a few ways over time trying to maximize performance with a modicum of success:

I learned which of the two front sights is the one aligned with the target and trusted that sight (lol sounds dumb I know).

Over time I've been able start with with the crossed sights, partially squinted my dominant eye until the the sight picture clears up into one sight, and then opened the squinted eye and been able to retain the clearish sight and keep the target in focus. As time goes on I can achieve this sooner and sooner with less squinting and a shorter delay. I feel like over time that I've been able to train (strengthen?) my weak eye to take over sooner.

I know this is very shooter dependent but it may work for some people.

An accomplished shooter who has done a lot of work in this space is multi-class GM Yong Lee (yleegm on instagram). He has done a few podcasts on Firearms Nation where he has talked about some interesting vision exercises he's done to overcome vision issues.

[JCN]

Remove all distractions from the rear sight. Black only, no color present to draw the visual focus to the rear sight.

I was still having issues with competition irons (all black rear, huge FO front) at the safety table… but then at the match, things went to usual target focus and no issues at all.