Teach me how to shoot with one eye shut

[Freedom_fighter_in_IL]

JBrady555, try this, next time you are shooting handgun, try a few left handed. It will feel weird at first but since you do seem to have some lefty capabilities (kicking lefty) you may find it a lot more easy than you would imagine. Try using a left stance Weaver body position and try with both eyes open then with your right eye shut. As I said, it will feel awkward at first but give it a few magazines to get the feel. You might be surprised at the results as I was. With pistol scopes, I have absolutely no problem now picking up the target in the scope with both eyes open both quickly and properly. If this does work for you you will be patting yourself on the back in no time with much improved grouping on targets.

Good luck

 

[twoblink]

Wear an eyepatch! I'm not joking! Find out which is your dominant eye and which isn't, and wear an eyepatch on the recessive. Competitive shooters do that sometimes.

 

[Freedom_fighter_in_IL]

Deadin, you just scared one of my Rotties with that picture!!!

 

[JBrady555]

wow thanks for the great info everyone, I'll be trying everyone's advice. Kludge yours really hit home, because when you went into depth at the end of your post on how you shoot, its EXACTLY how I shoot. Makes me just think I need to practice more, maybe not paying enough attention to trigger control could be pulling me off the targets more than my eyes.

 

[doc2rn]

I shoot with both open and its all about the front sight. I would also like to add if you want to shoot one eyed put tape over your weak eye of your shooting glasses.

 

[Pete D.]

Very nice thread.
Kudos, especially, to Kludge for his expansive and well thought out post.
One of the important differences between shooting a shotgun with both eyes open and a pistol with both open is related to the idea that in the shooter/shotgun system, the shooter's eye is the rear sight. How well the shotgun "fits" the shooter or how well the shooter has adapted to a particular gun determines whether the gun shoots where it is pointed. Thus, a very common, and accurate, comment about shooting a shotgun is that you don't aim a shotgun, you point it. (plus the fact that the targets are moving).
Keeping both eyes open eliminates "sympathetic" dilation of the pupils, in a sense, "stabilizing" both eyes and minimizing muscle tension. If the non-aiming eye is "blacked out", it will dilate open. The other, open, aiming eye is affected by this....it wants to dilate open a bit also. The more open the pupil is, the shorter the depth of field. When aiming a pistol, we want as much depth of field as possible, hence the use and popularity of adjustable apertures like those from Merit and Gehmann.
(A related digression - back in the days of the Cold War, when any type of competition between the USA and the USSR became a battleground for warring philosophies, the Russians invested tremendous time and energy in the shooting sports,especially in "International Pistol" match shooting.
One of the enduring benefits of that time is the publication of A.A. Yur'Yev's "Competitive Shooting". There is extensive discussion of the eye and it's function in the aiming process - chapter 8. it is worth reading. ISBN 0-935998-53-5.)

About aiming and front and rear sights and the targets.....though there are three elements in the system, it is an optical impossibility for the eye to focus on more than one of those at a time. We focus on the front sight as it allows the greatest precision. Notice the big difference between that and shotgun shooting wherein the focus is on the target, sight alignment having been taken care of by mounting the gun.
Pete