both eyes open, but one eye covered?

[wallysparx]

interestingly enough, i was watching cbs having a feature on some ncaa target shooting just now (i wasn't quite sure if they were airguns or .22s). in any case, i noticed that the shooters would keep both eyes open, but many of them had some sort of cover over one side of their glasses. does this have any real benefit other than avoiding the muscle strain from keeping one eye constantly closed?

 

[1911 guy]

Optical exclusion

I'm no target shooter, but here's what limited experience I have with funny doo-dadds on glasses.

Some shooters use them to solve cross-dominance problems (my wife, for one) by disrupting the field of view of the offending eye. Others use them to induce a "tunnel vision"-like field of view without losing peripheral vision because you can see around the glasses or the attachment on the lens. similar to being able to see farther when holding a paper towel tube up to you eye like a telescope. Of course there are no lenses or magnification, but you limit visual clutter and allow your eye to focus more clearly on what you are looking at directly.

 

[Lou629]

As i've aged and my eyesight has gotten a bit worse over the years, i now find that i shoot a whole lot better with both eyes open. It took some getting used to with a handgun, and most especially with a rifle, but the results on the paper spoke for themselves. The really funny part is that when i shoot clays with the 12Ga., i still do better with one eye closed. Go figure.

 

[JohnKSa]

The best solution is to leave both eyes open but put a translucent cover over the non-sighting eye. A strip of scotch tape over the off-side lens of your shooting glassses is an easy way to do this.

Closing an eye causes strain from the squinting, and either closing or covering an eye with a light-proof cover will result in your sighting eye dilating somewhat due to the reduction of light going into your off eye (they work as a unit.)

That dilation reduces your depth of focus and causes more problems with glare.

If you can shoot with both eyes open AND without covering an eye, you're probably better off, especially for "practical" type shooting.

 

[tegemu]

a common, "Eyeglass trick" is to put "Blinders" on the side of the frames, to minimize distraction.

 

[Standing Wolf]

Most of the guys I shoot bullseye with use occluders to cover their non-dominant eyes. I just close my weak eye. So far, so good.