Dave McCracken
Moderator In Memoriam
Today was the third straight trip to PGC in a row where someone was having trouble hitting due to mixed eye/hand dominance that I was able to help simply by telling them to shut their left eye.
I've seen estimates that say that 40% of women and 15% of men have this problem, and sometimes it seems the estimates run low.
QUICK CHECK:
Look at the place where two walls and the ceiling meet farthest from you with both eyes open. Point to it with your trigger finger,arm fully extended. Now close your eye on that side. If the point and your finger are still aligned, you have some eye/hand dominance issues.
This shows the most when shotgunning. Handguns and rifles have sights, and the near-ubiquitous scope sidesteps the issue nicely. But the eye is the rear sight on a shotgun. So, we NEED that eye in line properly.
So, you've done the test and found that you're among the accursed. So what's next?
There's a number of ways to deal with mixed dominance.
Shoot from the other side. I urge complete rookies to do this, but someone with lots of shooting behind them has to backtrack a good bit.
Use a Magic Dot. This is placed on the lens of the shooting glasses where the dominant eye is blocked from seeing the bead. Supposedly, this allows two eye vision but keeps the correct eye the correct eye in charge.
Switch to a fiber optic bead, the kind that one can only see from directly behind. Brister talks of this in his masterwork, ca 1976.
The Hull Elf uses a front sight on his trap gun that has a little fence on the left side that blocks the off eye from seeing the bead. Made of metal thin enough that it's nigh invisible from behind, he says it works.
Or one can just close that eye. One loses stereoscopic vicion, but this is otherwise quite effective.
I had dominance probs in the past, but they seem to be in abeyance at the moment. Grinding out thousands of shots helps....
Questions, comments?...
I've seen estimates that say that 40% of women and 15% of men have this problem, and sometimes it seems the estimates run low.
QUICK CHECK:
Look at the place where two walls and the ceiling meet farthest from you with both eyes open. Point to it with your trigger finger,arm fully extended. Now close your eye on that side. If the point and your finger are still aligned, you have some eye/hand dominance issues.
This shows the most when shotgunning. Handguns and rifles have sights, and the near-ubiquitous scope sidesteps the issue nicely. But the eye is the rear sight on a shotgun. So, we NEED that eye in line properly.
So, you've done the test and found that you're among the accursed. So what's next?
There's a number of ways to deal with mixed dominance.
Shoot from the other side. I urge complete rookies to do this, but someone with lots of shooting behind them has to backtrack a good bit.
Use a Magic Dot. This is placed on the lens of the shooting glasses where the dominant eye is blocked from seeing the bead. Supposedly, this allows two eye vision but keeps the correct eye the correct eye in charge.
Switch to a fiber optic bead, the kind that one can only see from directly behind. Brister talks of this in his masterwork, ca 1976.
The Hull Elf uses a front sight on his trap gun that has a little fence on the left side that blocks the off eye from seeing the bead. Made of metal thin enough that it's nigh invisible from behind, he says it works.
Or one can just close that eye. One loses stereoscopic vicion, but this is otherwise quite effective.
I had dominance probs in the past, but they seem to be in abeyance at the moment. Grinding out thousands of shots helps....
Questions, comments?...