Right handed rifle, left eye dominant

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I also am RH but LED. All of my rifles are right handed and mostly military. :):)
I prefer to shoot lefty but if the left shoulder gets sore or tired from a lot of bench shooting I switch to the right one. Left handed just feels more natural to me.
I have a co worker who is the same but he still shoots right handed but his head is across the rifle looking down the sights with his left eye ! It sure looks weird while he is shooting but that is the way he shoots ...... :D:D
BTW shooting rifles lefty is the only "lefty" thing I do ! :D:D
 
I have a co worker who is the same but he still shoots right handed but his head is across the rifle looking down the sights with his left eye ! It sure looks weird while he is shooting but that is the way he shoots ..
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O...M...G.

Sure hope he doesn't go in for magnums some day -- I wonder if it is actually possible to DIE from "scope eye?" And I'll bet he's a hoot on the trap and skeet range.

This would be a good example of why there's often GOOD way to do something, maybe a BETTER way, quite often a BEST way. ... and then there's the "non-of-the-above" way like this!
 
Oh, someone mentioned handguns, I shot 'em right handed and just sight with the left eye. I have no problem doing this, but I would NOT shoot a rifle this way.

I did see a picture of a rifle stock set up for this, though, somewhere. Probably could google it, but I got to stop my break now and get back to butherin' venison.
 
I have a co worker who is the same but he still shoots right handed but his head is across the rifle looking down the sights with his left eye ! It sure looks weird while he is shooting but that is the way he shoots
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My Dad noticed that I was doing this when he first took me out shooting with a single-shot B/A .22 rifle ... I was ~6-7 years old.

He told me that I should use my right eye to aim and I have been doing that with rifles ever since.

It was many years later that I first read of the "dominent eye" thing and confirmed that I am RH/LED.
 
Unless you have an injury, eye dominance is mental. I have trained myself to use my right eye when shooting right handed and my left eye when shooting left handed. I have actually gotten to the point where I can mentally shift my eye dominance.
 
Every time i hear people advise left eyed people to shoot anything but left handed i facepalm.


1. right handedness has no appreciable benefit for shooting most firearms.

2. shooting longarms with anything other than your master eye is more difficult than doing it the proper way, and with the same amount of training will always be less effective.

I'm left eyed/right handed, and I have direct experience with doing this both ways.
 
Personally, I am RH/LE, and I just won't buy a bolt gun. Bolt guns offer me nothing that a semi-auto couldn't do better for my personal applications. The worst I have to deal with on a decent non-bullpup semi-auto is brass flying in front of my face. But then again, I've played enough Counter-Strike that I can mentally block that out anyway.
 
Unless you have an injury, eye dominance is mental.
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This is completely untrue. In fact, if you really stop to think about it, it doesn't even make sense.

Eye dominance is a function composed of several factors, including vision acuity differences between the eyes and the wiring of the brain. Trying to train against it is unnecessary and will never give you as favorable results as the same amount of training would give if dedicated to training to use the dominant eye.

YES, you can shoot long guns cross-eyed (so to speak). But you're fighting your own body to do so.
 
Sam1911 said:
This is completely untrue. In fact, if you really stop to think about it, it doesn't even make sense.

Eye dominance is a function composed of several factors, including vision acuity differences between the eyes and the wiring of the brain. Trying to train against it is unnecessary and will never give you as favorable results as the same amount of training would give if dedicated to training to use the dominant eye.

YES, you can shoot long guns cross-eyed (so to speak). But you're fighting your own body to do so.
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So, are you saying you can train yourself to use your other hand, but you can't train yourself to use your other eye?
 
So, are you saying you can train yourself to use your other hand, but you can't train yourself to use your other eye?
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Absolutely. I am damned near blind in my right eye, 20-70 corrected is pretty sucky. If both eyes were as bad, I couldn't get a driver's license or read this board without greatly increasing print size. There IS NO WAY I'll ever see well out of my right eye and my eye docs over the years have agreed with this. I figured this out at age 8, trained myself to shoot lefty, and now it's danged weird to pick up a rifle or shotgun right handed. I don't see WHY I should be forced to shoot with a blind eye. :rolleyes: Well, I never was forced, but I never took formal lessons in marksmanship. Once I figured out shooting lefty, though, there wasn't a squirrel in the woods inside 50 yards that was safe, I can tell ya that! :D

It sounds to me like YOU really don't have an eye dominance problem. Must be nice.
 
Personally, I am RH/LE, and I just won't buy a bolt gun. Bolt guns offer me nothing that a semi-auto couldn't do better for my personal applications.
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I do own bolt guns. Danged hard to get sub MOA out of most autos. Even my bud's .300 mag BAR shoots at best 1.5 MOA. I might get that one down to MOA, though, if I owned it just by handloading for it. The bolt gun is much easier to work with, though.

I do have a nifty little SKS with a sporting stock and 5 round mag that makes a pretty darned good brush rifle. I also have a .357 magnum Rossi 92 lever carbine I like a lot, both pretty ambidextrous. I also like the Browning BLR, buddy has one of THOSE, too, in .308 and it's a nice rifle if you don't wanna put up with the bolt gun. There ARE alternatives, but I've learned to live with and actually like my bolt guns. I shot my first deer at age 11 with that old Remington 722 in .257 Roberts shooting lefty. I still have it, inherited it, and wont give it up. :D

A lot of it is probably how young you start. Youngesters learn faster and easier. Us old farts' brains get fossilized. :D The old dogs and new tricks thing.
 
i too am right handed and left eye dominant, so is my father who taught me how shoot. If i concetrate i can look with my right eye and mostly pull it off. For the most part i can get away with a mild squint of the left eye and be dead on. As far as snap shots i must squint or i won't see the sights at all. Hitting clays i have to squint otherwise i'm just wasting ammo. My brother's left handed and left eye dominat and shoots left handed, it's funny to watch him operate a right handed bolt with his right hand, shooting left handed. For me it's not an option going lefty, my left shoulder is bad and mainly along for the ride, so i have to shoot handguns kinda sideways, but heck it works.
 
I'm a lefty and am gradually selling/trading off all my RH guns as I get older, excluding milsurps of course. I don't care about resale value....how much my wife sells them for after I die is irrelevant.

I had a case head failure in a 270 a couple of years ago. It was in lefty. Seeing how much gas blew out of the relief hole made me wonder if i would still have my vision had I been shooting a RH action. It was a powerful attitude changing experience.
 
I had a case head failure in a 270 a couple of years ago. It was in lefty. Seeing how much gas blew out of the relief hole made me wonder if i would still have my vision had I been shooting a RH action. It was a powerful attitude changing experience.
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What caused it? Do you wear eye protection when you shoot?

If I ever get a flinter, I'm thinkin' it'll have to be a lefty.
 
So, are you saying you can train yourself to use your other hand, but you can't train yourself to use your other eye?
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Exactly, and those who do find it much easier and more successful!
 
I can't quite see the logic in that...
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Here are a few pages that delve into the issue and the possible fixes.

http://www.northcarolinasportsman.com/details.php?id=519
http://www.huntersfriend.com/eye-dominance-issues.htm
http://www.ar15.com/forums/t_9_1/231570_.html

It either boils down to training yourself to shoot from the side of your dominant eye (which really doesn't take that much work) or "dumbing-down", hampering, occluding, etc. your BEST eye. As vision is pretty much the most important part of accurate shooting, you can see why that isn't a terribly good idea.

Now, for some folks it is possible to correct vision in the non-dominant eye to the point that it exceeds the acuity of the original dominant eye. And sometimes that will cause the body to shift it's natural tendency to give the "weak-side" eye control over to the now improved eye. But there's no guarantee, and not all vision is so correctable. For someone who's right handed, but their left-eye is dominant and rated 20/16 -- and their right eye is only correctable to 20/40, taping over their left eyeglasses lens (or worse, shutting the left eye, which we know isn't good shooting technique anyway!) means they lose the benefit of their sharper eye altogether!
 
The original question was simply about eye dominance. It was never stated that the vision was much worse in the non dominant eye. If you have 20/20 vision in both eyes it makes more since to me to shoot right handed since that is what most guns are designed for. And from the first link you posted:

 
True, but (of course) that suggestion does not stand alone. You should have put it in the context in which it was presented.

That is the answer for an older man who has unfortunately fooled himself into thinking he's too old to learn how to improve. Ironically, he had only recently learned to shoot shotguns so the entire sport was new to him. He went through the entire basic learning curve the "wrong" way simply because he didn't believe he could do it "right." Had he started off on the right path, his learning curve would have been no longer and he'd be a better wing-shot now than he is. Of course, now that he's gone to all that trouble, he simply won't accept the work (and temporary loss of relative skill) to re-learn the more advantageous method. So, he'll never reach the level he could have.

So in the end, he's presenting a cautionary tale, not an example to follow.
 
My vision is better in my non-dominant eye. Eye dominance is wired into our brains at a very early age. It has nothing to do with visual acuity. Granted if someone is legally blind in one eye then of course eye dominance will shift to the other eye. That is why patching the dominant eye for a long period of time may work. You would have to be committed to doing so 24/7 in order to teach your brain to ignore the other eye and you still may not get results.


Posted from Thehighroad.org App for Android
 
Andrew Wyatt said:
so, TL;DR:

if you're left eyed, shoot left eyed.
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Tried it and don't like it. I shoot a bow, shotgun and rifle right eyed and hand guns left eyed all with my right hand. I put plenty of meat in the freezer and don't cause hardly any cripples, probably fewer than most. Sooooo, no thanks. It just doesn't feel natural to me no matter how much I practice with my left. I would imagine I'm not alone there.


Posted from Thehighroad.org App for Android
 
I am RH/LE cross dominant....

If you were brand new to shooting, i would start you shooting left handed.

it is usually always better to shoot with your dominant eye if you can.


when i started shooting, i realized i was cross dominant, and therefore i took the time to learn how to shoot with both hands.

however when i shoot matches, i will always shoot right handed...it is far more comfortable for me and i feel i have greater control over the rifle when i am shooting with my 'strong' hand......i simply occlude my left eye to cure the dominance issue.

the funny thing about eye dominance is, it can actually change between eyes given enough 'training'.

when i started shooting, i was very strongly left eye dominant......however over time, lots of shooting, and lots of practice, i am now 'cycloptic' and my eyes are equally dominant(as confirmed by my eye doctor).

essentially if one eye is blocked, the other will become temporarily dominant and will become 'stronger'.....do that often enough and eye dominance will begin to change.

now does this mean you should wear an eye patch all the time?.....well, you can...but people may find it a tad strange.

....personally i would just use some scotch tape on my shooting glasses whenever you shoot your rifles and continue to shoot them right handed.
 
I am Left handed left eye dominant. I shoot right handed bolt action guns left handed. I have been doing it my entire life.
 
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