My Lady friend has started shooting with me! That is a good thing, but after she attended a "Boot Camp" put on by the Vintagers, we discovered that her left eye is her dominant one. She is a right handed shooter. Aside from buying her a left handed gun (just bought her a Beretta 20) does any one have any suggestions?

I went through this with my youngest son: left handed, right eyed dominant. He learned to shoot right handed. It did not take long for him to get used to it. Just be patient.

Recent thread on Trapshooters.com with lots of links on the 2nd page and discussion of 'dot' or tape occlusives
https://www.trapshooters.com/threads/cross-eye-dominate-shooter.919056/

2021 DoubleGunBBS thread
https://www.doublegunshop.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=600538

Long threads regarding the visual processing challenges most women deal with
https://www.trapshooters.com/threads/female-shooters-using-two-eyes.836675/
https://www.shotgunworld.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=513876&p=4327530





If she is serious about shooting, it would be well worth connecting her with a coach who understands women's visual issues. Phil Kiner is most gracious about sharing his expertise by phone, and a clinic with Nora Ross would be an excellent choice.

I have a slightly different problem but the fix is similar. Sometimes my eye dominance will shift. I am right eye dominant and right handed. Occasionally, over a day of shooting zz birds or trap my eye dominance will shift and I will start missing targets. I really think my brain gets bored. At the suggestion of Cyril Adams, my fix has been a greasy finger print or chap stick smear on the left glass lens to force the right eye to see out of the clear lens. Now that I have I figured out what happens, I just smear the left lens before I start. It doesn't happen in field shooting or sporting clays.

Not everyone is coordinated enough to shoot with their non dominate side. For those people a simple piece of tape on the eye you don’t want to be dominate works well. Most new shooters are very adaptable and only want to see improvement. These are recreational shooters not the ones who are looking for the edge in targets to move them up into national championship levels.

I had a friend once, who was about top 5-6 in his sport, when he decided he had peaked and completely changed his shooting style so he dropped down to mediocre for a full year, before he ascended to top 5 level again. I never felt he was much better but he claimed his averages were almost half a bird across the board better. He went from both eyes open with a dot on his semi dominate eye to one eye closed and became a sustained lead shooter. Point is there are many ways to shoot and with effort and practice you can learn them all. I am ambidextrous so it helps a lot with shooting from either side. I can shoot from both left and right sides, with shooting styles that go from swing through to sustained lead. If I were serious about scores, which I’m too old to worry about now, I would pick just one style and hone it. Shooting is meant to be fun so find what works reasonably well for you and enjoy your friends.

To answer the OP.
Can your lady friend wink or close her left eye ?
Many fine shooters close an eye whilst shooting , many fine shooters only have one eye .
Which eye is your Master when shooting from the hip??????

One of the best female trap shooters ever, Lela Hall Frank, and 2 other female shooters, are shown at the 1940 GAH clearly closing their left eyes; at about 30 sec.

https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/...ion-pile-of-empty-news-footage/502472065

The problem is that the eye wink muscles are bilaterally innervated, and for many it is impossible to shut one eye without partially shutting the other, or with visual distortion of the on-eye with doing so. There is also the fatigue factor, which the tape avoids.

Image of Vicki Ash with totally occluding her L eye, which she no longer does



A good video

Here you go. Magic Dot/. Problem solved.

http://www.texasshootersoptical.com/MagicDotSystem-2.aspx

forcing a shooter to swap shooting from their natural shoulder position and pointing tendencies is just wrong in my opinion. a complete novice might get used to it but the someone who has been shooting for a while will gain little benefit in the long run. Ben Hustlewaithe, former world champion and now a expert coach teaches this.

I have a new problem. After shooting with a dot on the left lens, I've had cataract surgery on the left eye. Now my left eye sees very well, while my right eye doesn't see as well as the left. I'm going to try shooting with both eyes open, as well as trying the blink method.
At 75, it sucks getting old!
Karl

+1 on the "dot" placed on the lens of the left eye shooting glasses.

You want the dot positioned so that it only blocks the left eye from seeing the bbl & rib of the gun when mounted & the head on the comb. It take some adjustment to get the dot positioned correctly. Correctly placed it won't block left eye vision except when the gun is properly mounted.

For a dot I use opaque scotch tape & mounted on the inside of the lens. A fired .375 H & H case w/ the case mouth sharpened w a case trimmer cuts a clean 3/8" dot but anything similar in diameter will work. Just put a piece of tape on a leather scrap to cut the dot then peel it off & place on the lens.

I should add that I shoot w/ a low gun mount so I am seeing and tracking the bird with both eyes until just before the shot which works well for me. I'm not sure how well the dot would work for someone who shoots with a premounted gun as this means you are only picking up the bird w/ one eye, a definite disadvantage.

I'm right handed and left eye dominant. Both shotgun and rifle are shot off my left shoulder and with handguns I just tilt my head slightly so my right cheek is touching my shoulder at the joint. I rarely have a problem shooting this way and I am a good to very good hand gun shot and average to good shot with a rifle or shotgun. I have been competing in a variety of shooting sports for over 25 years and the cross dominance has never been an issue.

Unless your lady friend wants to be super serious and/or highly competitive there is no reason to try and force her to use her right eye or buy special shotguns for her. If anything cross dominance can be a slight advantage in that for long guns she will be using her dominant hand to reload the gun.

Brittany,
I'm going to try your suggestion of a 3/8" dot. The dot I was using is a Magic Dot branded one that is 3/4", perhaps much too large. They worked before, but not now!
Karl

I have tried many solutions, but the crossover stock is the ultimate solution. My left eye dot is permanently installed when I shoot a straight gun and a right eye dot is permanently installed on the glasses I use with the crossover gun to reinforce my use of the left eye when using that gun. Remember, as one poster emphasized, the dot should only block the front sight and the front end of the rib, leaving the view of the target unobscured. Some coaches just don't understand the proper use of the dot. The dot is not meant to make you a one eye shooter. The dot is meant to make you a two eye shooter who does not look at the gun with the off eye. The placement of the dot is a careful procedure when done correctly.

So true, the only way to determine the distance to the target is through triangulation, which requires a view of it with both eyes.

So grateful I have never had eye dominance issues.

Keep it simple Chuck. Try the 3/8” dot first. Don’t mess with changing guns or having her shoot off her non dominant shoulder.
Ps. Missed you at Whittington. Can’t forgive BK for being tardy.

Stan: The rule of thumb is that stereoscopic vision (depth perception) is effective up to 100x the distance between the eyes, or about 6 cm X 100 = 6 meters or about 20 feet. Functional depth perception is about 30 feet. SO binocular vision is not of significant advantage in most clay target disciplines. Distance and speed of a moving clay past 30 feet is determined primarily by its relation to background objects and its perceived change in size.
Binocular summation refers to the improved visual performance of binocular vision compared to that of monocular vision.
Improvement has been well established in brightness perception, flicker perception, contrast sensitivity, peripheral visual field, and visual acuity.
This study states visual acuity is improved 11%
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8350167/
Response time (visual processing) is also improved with 2 eyes
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877042814022435

Some people may perceive a difference in size and speed of a moving object two vs. one eye; but like visual acuity from binocular summation, the difference is no more than about 10%.

And BTW (but not dominance relevant) the ability to "see things in slow motion" (Zeitraffer phenomenon) in order to process images more quickly would have a great advantage in shooting sports, and many others like ping pong and hitting a 100 mph fast ball.

my wife just started shooting last year and at 63 picked it up pretty quick despite being right handed and left eye dominant. We tried left shoulder and tape but in the end she decided just to wink left eye before shot. As we recreational shooters it is good enough.
At 69 my left eye is now stronger than right and if I try an O/U my left eye wants to play but it looks down the side of the barrels. Thanks goodness I am an SxS guy so my right eye stays in power

No argument with your facts, tho' I'm not sure I agree with the numbers (distances). But ........ what the mind believes is at least as important as what the eye(s) see. If I believe that I will shoot better with two eyes open, past 30', it's hard to convince me other wise. Self confidence, or the lack of, is huge. Know what I mean?

A friend just mentioned his eyes are changing and in recent years his left eye wants to take over. He has adapted by just closing his left eye before the shot, but he said he has to close it before the gun fully comes up, because if he's ready to shoot, sometimes he will find himself trying to line up on his left eye, and crossed up off target. This is for gun down casual bird hunting. It also seems to affect his bow and open sight rifle/pistol shooting, but making due so far, he says it sucks.

ATTENTION!
Dr.Drew Hause, thank you that is a brilliant post from a professional who knows what he is talking about and is a true shooting enthusiast .
I really do tire of reading 'so-called' 'experts' who actually know very little about the subject matter but are quick enough to try and make a dollar.

Thank you.
"Cross-firing", and the advantages of 2-eyed shooting was recognized > 130 years ago
Practical Hints on Shooting: Being a Treatise on the Shot Gun and Its Management; Game, Wildfowl, and Trap Shooting; Together with Notes on Sporting Dogs and Ferrets, and Other Useful Information Relative to Shooting, K. Paul Trench, 1887
https://books.google.com/books?id=xrwUAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA63&lpg
Sportsmen are much indebted to Mr. Gilbert for the many scientific inventions which he has made with regard to firearms, both military and sporting. Among the most remarkable of these are his “Two-eyed Sight” and celebrated “Shooting Corrector.” After several years of continued study Mr. Gilbert first produced the two-eyed sight, which was intended to obviate the difficulty so common with sportsmen who have a powerful left eye, and to enable all to shoot with both eyes open.



What was once thought to be fact regarding dominance however turned out not to be.
It was believed, and is still repeated, that dominance is established at birth and does not switch permanently, nor shift transiently and that is incorrect. I can shift dominance station to station, and target to target, on the skeet field

Rhodri Woodhouse, “A Changing View of Eye Dominance”, 2009
http://orca.cf.ac.uk/55827/1/U584362.pdf
The experiments presented in this body of work have shown that eye dominance is not a static phenomenon, as was believed for centuries, but is adaptable to a variety of viewing situations. Dominance switching tends to favour image size as a cue to switching as a larger visual image contains more data that can be used by the visual system.
This adaptability will likely impact upon several other visual processes, such as directional judgements, and the true extent of dominance switching remains to be discovered with this work providing a solid basis for all future studies.

“Eye Dominance and Shooting” by Michael Yardley
http://www.shootinguk.co.uk/answers/eye-dominance-and-your-shooting-13003
Age is also a significant issue when considering eye dominance. This is a most intriguing. Most pre-pubescent boys do not have clear dominance in one eye. Post puberty, most (not all) develop absolute or predominant eye dominance in the eye corresponding to their ‘handedness’. As we enter the summer and autumn of our lives things change too. Typically, somewhere between the ages of 45-60, those men who were clearly dominant in one eye may find the other begins to have a significant pull.

And researchers are leaning more regarding the visual processing difference of females and why a majority need some form of occlusive


Stan: the 30 feet refers to depth perception. Binocular summation is not distance related.

I'm thankful that this is one problem I've never experienced; I'm right handed and my right eye is the master eye and it's never shifted.

But one of my uncles does have the problem - he is also right handed, but the left eye has always been dominant. I've always been impressed that he had figured that out by age 10, and without any help. His training back in 1960 consisted of his father giving him a shotgun and telling him to learn to hit with it. He did it by simply learning to shoot left handed, and he has always been one of the best wing shots I have known.

With the technology available today, and easy fixes like the magic dot, it might be better to go a different route now. But I have always thought that my uncle was proof that if you start early enough in life it isn't that hard to just learn to shoot left handed.

Good luck to the lady on finding the best solution.

Thanks, Doc. I understand it a bit better, but not completely, even after reading some more on the two. But, not being in the medical field, the difference is irrelevant for me.

I think I will continue using the term "depth perception" to refer to all distances, up to 30', and beyond (for the simple reason that this is how everyone in my "world" understands it), with one possible exception ...........one of my best shooting buddies says he has very poor vision in his left eye. Being right-handed he still shoots sporting clays extremely well. He complains often about not being able to determine if a target is a standard target way out there or a midi closer in (always beyond 30' however), and uses his "poor depth perception" as an excuse for missing. Next time he uses the term "depth perception", to describe what he lacks, I may just need to correct him, with a lengthy explanation. He may not be convinced, but if it distracts him sufficiently from the task at hand it might "buy me a bird or two". There's nothing quite so fun as getting in your buddy's head.

I am interested in opinions on the school of thought which holds that eye dominance is largely psychological and that by concentrating on the target most people can shoot well with both eyes open.

https://shotgunnirvana.blogspot.com/2021/09/eye-dominance-and-subconscious-mind-in.html (this is long).

https://www.pennsport.co.uk/ (video halfway down the page. This is short on detail).

Both of these mostly discuss new shooters. I have struggled unsuccessfully with strong cross dominance (tape/dots/vaseline, winking) for decades and my mediocre shooting never improves much. However, I occasionally try both eyes open and sometimes it works great for a 10-20 shots, then falls apart and I can't hit a thing. But the fact that it works for a while suggests that it can be learned.

Thoughts?

LGF,
That's what I am faced with now that I see better with my left eye than my right. I find that I do well for awhile and then falter when using both eyes.
I'm just going to keep at it!
Karl

I have a friend who teaches neuro-ophthalmology down the street at Midwestern U. and he would strongly disagree that "eye dominance is largely psychological". Please discuss with your eye professional.

Information from 2 optometrists who specialize in helping shotgunners

Dr. Barry Nolt on cross-firing and gun fit
https://www.drbarrynolt.com/shooting-glasses/shooting-articles-by-dr-nolt/why-did-i-miss/

Dr Richard Colo discussing eye dominance and clay target shooting



Gil Ash and Nick Penn demand 2 eyed shooting



You can draw your own conclusions regarding Ralph Cushman, author of "The Myth of Eye Dominance in Shotgunning and the Reality of the Subconscious Mind" that you linked
https://www.trapshooters.com/threads/full-n-fuller-credentials.909965/
https://www.trapshooters.com/threads/not-to-hijack-the-eye-dominance-thread.201625/
https://www.trapshooters.com/threads/eye-dominance-issue.914183/page-2
https://www.shotgunworld.com/threads/left-eye-dominant-shooter.540925/

Dave Carrie, a one eyed & accomplished shooter would disagree with all 3
https://www.davecarrieshooting.co.uk/

as do Ed Solomons and Ed Lyons
https://www.shotgunworld.com/threads/worried-about-closing-an-eye.543479/#post-4651525

as does Peter Blakeley
https://www.peteblakeley.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/pete-blakeley-one-eye-or-two.pdf
His discussion of shifting dominance which you'll need to cut and paste into a search as it would not link
https://sites.google.com/site/howspaceisperceived/a-practical-example?tmpl=%2FSsystem%2Fapp%2Ftemplates%2Fprint%2F&showPrintDialogue=1

as does Phil Kiner
https://www.trapshooters.com/threads/eye-dominance-issue.874677/page-4
"With all due respect those that think it is an issue of looking properly - YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT THE HELL YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT. PERIOD
If you DON'T have an issue with cross-firing you have no idea what it is like to have an issue and it is real and it is incontrollable and at this moment in time not curable."


There is some degree of dominance plasticity in the very young, which is the point of using an occlusive for amblyopia (lazy eye).
There are anecdotal reports of shooters claiming they can change dominance, and some who are cross-dominant have successfully competed with both eyes open, notably Brad Dysinger.

Drew, thanks very much for another highly informative post. After reading/watching all those links, it is clear that Penn and Cushman are a small minority, and neither explicitly address strong cross dominance in experienced shooters.

As an ex eye professional I feel that Doc Drew's post(s) on this are spot on. I think that I have previously made a post or two concerning vision and shooting and about the very large amount of "information" put out by so-called "experts" on this matter. Some of this "advice" and "explanation" comes from some very well known individuals.

His explanation about depth perception and judging distance is particularly good and easily understood by the layman. As he explains, BINOCULAR vision is extremely important for depth perception for ranges UP TO about 20 feet or so. Beyond that distance it essentially makes zero difference whether using MONOCULAR (one eye) or BINOCULAR (both eye) vision. Unfortunately I can verify that this is true due to the fact that I was blinded in one eye 13 years ago. And of course the affected eye was my master eye which forced me to learn to shoot from the opposite side which is another story. (Need help with that? I've got answers, haha.)

Very close (arm's length) depth perception is terrible. Examples would be threading a needle, using tools, pouring liquids, pushing buttons at the gas pump and even something as simple as applying tooth paste to a tooth brush requires a lot of effort. At a bigger distance like parking a vehicle? Extremely difficult to determine if I am six inches or three feet from an object in front. Same with mirrors pulling into a garage. Again, get beyond the approximate 20 foot range and the problem totally disappears. In other words, judging target distance with one eye only is unaffected. Obtaining a driver's license is a non-issue. In fact I can still hold a 1st Class FAA Airman's Medical for my ATP certificate.

I did and do notice that processing visual information was slower. Initially there was a noticeable difference which with time has effectively disappeared for the most as far as I am aware. An example of this would be trying to pick a single out on a Bobwhite covey rise! Now that I do notice! Actual visual acuity in the remaining eye is totally unchanged, still 20/15. However, using TWO eyes with good vision is simply far more effective because that's the way our total visual system is designed to function. My take from all of this is that if you have two normally functioning eyes use them BOTH. And it goes without saying.....PROTECT them.

It will be a lot easier to just link this thread when similar questions arise in the future, so I thought I'd add Robert Churchill's How To Shoot written in 1925. "The Master Eye" is Chapter VIII
In the normal man the degree of "master eyedness" is slight. What is not so well-known is that fatigue of the master eye rapidly transfers the mastery (temporarily of course) from one eye to the other.
If you strain and weaken the command of your right eye by putting your head down to the stock of a badly fitting gun or by a bad habit of gunmounting you tire the eye.
After a few such shots the right eye is fatigued and the left then takes mastery.
(His interpretation of transient dominance switching)
In practice at other sports this eye problem does not appear to cause trouble. Left eyed cricketers and tennis and golf men all probably exist but only in shooting do we hear of it as a dreadful physical problem.
(Interestingly, today we believe cross-dominance may be of an advantage in baseball, cricket and golf.)

If you learn to shoot without contortions and strain you will be in the same position as the ordinary man who uses his eyes all day without any perceptible strain or discomfort. By adopting a natural head position 75% of the master eye difficulty is solved.
If, on the other hand, you are completely left-eyed...(a "left-eyed" gunstock) will compensate for the trouble...

https://www.trapshooters.com/threads/robert-churchill-eyesight-and-the-master-eye.910472/

Just elevating this TTT for a friend who has only just discovered he has cross dominance.