the one eyed old man wants to know....

[bluestarlizzard]

4 years ago my dad was diagnoised with an innerocular melonoma. the cancer was so advanced that his left eye was removed. fortunatly, the cancer had not spread beyound the eye. it has been 4 years and he has been cancer free.

he has noticed a few intrestring things with his shooting since the removel of his eye. the first and formost being that his chosen shooting stance, the modified weaver, has become somewhat pointless, as the stance was designed to allow the shooter to be in a postion that uses perifial vision to assess his surrondings, with a turn of the head. his other odd bit is that he still closes his left eye (even though there isn't anything there) to shoot a long gun.

so my dad has a poll he would like to put out to those here on THR. How many one eyed shooters are out there and anything they've noticed about their shooting since loseing an eye?

 

[ChopperKen]

Bluestar,
I wonder about shooting with only one eye myself as my 8 year old daughter is going blind in her right eye.
She has a problem with sights/scopes on her 10-22(right handed-left eyed)
I'm teaching her to shoot lefty so she can use a scope easier.
I don't know how this will work but she thinks its a good idea.

 

[gunmn74]

My bow hunting partner lost an eye bull riding and he shoots a rifle
and a shotgun well. Bow hunting requires depth perception and he
claims you lose that ability with one eye. He shoots them high and
then he shoots them low but I am a good tracker.

 

[Antipasta]

I'm a natural rightie, but a retina problem has made me a one-eyed lefty shooter...and not too bad, if I do say so myself.

 

[Shooter973]

One eye........

My daughter lost her right eye when she was 8 years old in a scooter accident. At 14 I coached her to pass her Hunter Safety class with a Ruger M77/22. She passed on her first try.
My youngest son has no problems with his vision, passed his Hunter safety at 13 with the best scores of the day. Out shot the Hunter safety instructer!
My daughter is not much of a shooter, but can really hold her own with a handgun, doesn't shoot much rifle any more. She's 27 years old now. She does everything she has ever wanted to do. He vision hasn't held he back from doing anything.

 

[CRAZY-G]

My Grandpa lost his right eye at the age of 78, as he is right handed he tried to learn to shoot left handed but could not. We had a gunsmith make a mount to put the scope out for his left eye so he could shoulder his rifle right handed. He continued to get his deer every year until this year when he was not physically able to hunt.

 

[DoubleTapDrew]

I have both fortunately, but I'm very right eye dominant. Basically my eyes don't work together although I can switch between them at will. I still have perephial vision input from my left but it doesn't deliver the single image and depth perception like you'd normally get. My eye dr. when I was younger said I'd never be able to play baseball or fly an airplane. I did fine in baseball, haven't tried flying. You can and will adapt. The human body is great at that. One upside of it, learning to shoot with both eyes open was no problem at all since my brain blocked much of the left eye's input anyway
His weaver stance may look different but if that's what he shoots best with so be it. He'll just have to turn his head further left to take it all in when the threat is neutralized.

 

[sixgunner455]

My father lost vision in his left eye as a child, and has limited peripheral vision in his functioning right eye. He shoots very well, but is not very good at depth perception. He's had many accidents, and has some difficulty seeing deer in the field or seeing flying birds. He enjoys hunting, however, but we do make sure that someone is with him to keep him out of trouble and help spot for him.

My father in law was born w/o a lens in his left eye. He also shoots well. Since he could never see through the left eye, he had no adaptation to make.

 

[capttrash]

lost eye

I was right handed and right eye dominant. I lost my right eye due to retinal detachment, and I have learned to shoot left handed. Took a while but I can do pretty well

 

[MT GUNNY]

gunmn74

laser range finder, would be helpfull for your buddy

 

[LaEscopeta]

Well, I’m down to about 1 and ½ eyes. I had the retina detach in my right eye about a year ago, and the operation to reattach it was partially successful. It can see well enough with the bad eye to get decent depth perception, but I can’t aim with it, so I’ve had to learn to shoot left handed. I only started shooting again for the first time since I was a kid about 2.5 years ago, but it still feels awkward to shoot left handed. Despite this I’m pretty much back to shooting as well now as I was before the eye problem, but I was not the best shot in the world before. You won’t be seeing me posting my targets here any time soon…

 

[The Lone Haranguer]

... his other odd bit is that he still closes his left eye (even though there isn't anything there) to shoot a long gun.

That could be explained by many years of instinct and habit.

 

[One of Many]

I also had a detached retina, but it was treated immediately, and I recovered most of my vision. I still have a problem with floaters in that eye, and it seems to be a bit less clear (kind of like looking through extremely sheer curtains); it also seems to take longer to focus that eye now. Fortunately it was not my dominant eye, but it is on my dominant hand side. I still shoot with my dominant hand, using the eye that had the detached retina for long guns, but I have found that I am now using the dominant eye with handguns, where I used to be able to use the non-dominant eye.