Teaching Cub Scouts to shoot, and dealing with cross-dominance

[siglite]

With handguns, there's an easy solution.

With long guns, it's best to change hands and shoot with the hand that matches your dominant eye.

 

[akodo]

10% of the people are born lefties.

Anyone can change their hand dominance, simply remover or cripple the dominant hand and soon you will be using the other hand with ease.

Of course, this doesn't happen often.

Same thing with eyesight. Unfortunately, it is pretty common for one eye to be weaker, and this is totally unrelated to which eye the brain originally chooses to be dominant.

The eye with the best vision will soon become dominant, just like someone with a perminantly injured arm, the other arm will soon become dominant.

However, as eyes work in conjunction, it is harder to realize that one eye is worse than the other. And if vision is corrected, it is corrected to 20/20 in both eyes, so if cross-dominance has occured, there is no reason for the eyes to change.

My right eye is weaker than my left eye. When I was growing up my right eye vision deteriorated quicker, so by the time for the yearly eye exam, my right eye was worse off than my left.

Because of that, my eye dominance would sometimes change, especially later in life when I went 3-4 years after college with the same eye perscription, just ordering contact lenses on-line at a discount place, when i though my eyes had finally stablized, but they hadn't.

Anyways, because of this, my eye dominance is very weak. If I shoot with two eyes open and unobstructed, I see double. Closing the left eye is easiest, however, what is best is to put some sort of blinder on (a little banana-sticker on the left shooting glass lense, positioned to line up with the eye) as it perserves peripheral vision.


Of couse, we also recently had a no knock warrant served on a home on the say-so of an informant, where the home-owner returned fire until the police properly identified themselves.

Also, we had a Hmong (ethnic group from vietnam/laos who allied with USA during that war) undercover offcier get in an altercation, call for backup, backup arrived and opened fire on the officer.

 

[Dave R]

Bullseye, great info. Thanks.

Diagnosing cross dominance with the cubs was not a problem. When a kid was holding righty, and trying to align with his left eye, it was obvious.

I agree with you that tape is the best way to handle a high volume, short time per kid situation. Keep it simple. "Hey, lets try this and see if its easier to shoot with your other eye."

Pirate patches might be a cool option, too.

 

[streakr]

I also have left eye dominance as a right hand shooter. As a cowboy action shooter I must change pistols/rifle/shotty constantly and sometime switch to my left eye without realizing it.

Bullseye 57 recommended using clear tape to "block" the dominant eye. This is an excellent solution.

I use a variation of this method; I place a thin (.25") black translucent tape on the left lens of my safety glasses, just to the left of center. This does not interfere with my vision (even peripheral) when both eyes are open and, if I use my left eye inadvertently I see the tape and switch to my right eye.

streakr

 

[Pat McCoy]

DaveR,

Your best bet is to switch them to shooting with the dominant eye. Let them get down in prone they way they want to first, BUT require them to use the eye on that side (usually they try to twist their head over the stock to use the dominant eye anyhow).

Once they try the dominant hand but weak eye, have them try the other way and ASK them "can you see better that way?". Generally this ends the probelm.

Occasionally you will find someone with very weak dominance, and when you put the sight in front of one eye the dominance swithces to the other eye. Real problem here with iron sights, but usually solved by going to scope and shooting with dominanat eye, or putting a patch (cut out a piece of plastic milk carton) attached to the rear sight if aperture or the shooting glasses for open sights (this is where the tape on the upper part of the lens works great).

Learning to shoot with the dominant eye is sepecially important if they are ever going to shoot shotguns, as the eye becomes the rear sight. If shooting cross dominant (right hand but left eyed) the rear sight is offset a couple inches, making it tough to hit anything.

One other thing, be sure to build up the cheekpiece with cardboard and tape so their head can get solidly on the stock when they are looking thru the sight. You'll probably see a gap between their face and the stock when they line up the sights properly before you build it up.

Good luck.