The ' eyes ' have it !!

[Johnny batoo]

I know this topic has been covered many times in the past  but thought I would put my experiences as a new shooter on here.  I have been shooting now for about 6 months, I very quickly realised with some feed back from shooters I was with that I had a eye dominance issue. After researching at great length I have determined that I have what is know as ' central vision',  meaning that I don't have a dominant eye and my focal point can change at varying distances and angles.  So far I have tried many shooting AIDS including  glasses patches , fibre optics  and even tried shooting from both shoulders without any success.   The only success I have had  of any note is to acquire the target with both eyes open, track it to gauge speed and distance then squint my left eye ( right handed)  to adjust correct lead before shooting. I know the pros and coaches will say I am at a disadvantage with one eye shut as I loose my binocular vision,  but in my view I only loose it momentarily and by then I have decided where I am shooting the target and shut my left eye to ensure the gun is in right place!  I have met other shooters that adopt simalar methods who shoot to a good standard  AA and  AAA,  As a newbie all I am saying is the so called " orthodox " way or coached way of shooting clays may not work for us all. And at the end of the day if your comfortable with the way you shoot and your able to compete to a good standard ( competitions) what's the problem?????

 

[Will Hewland]

I know this topic has been covered many times in the past  but thought I would put my experiences as a new shooter on here.  I have been shooting now for about 6 months, I very quickly realised with some feed back from shooters I was with that I had a eye dominance issue. After researching at great length I have determined that I have what is know as ' central vision',  meaning that I don't have a dominant eye and my focal point can change at varying distances and angles.  So far I have tried many shooting AIDS including  glasses patches , fibre optics  and even tried shooting from both shoulders without any success.   The only success I have had  of any note is to acquire the target with both eyes open, track it to gauge speed and distance then squint my left eye ( right handed)  to adjust correct lead before shooting. I know the pros and coaches will say I am at a disadvantage with one eye shut as I loose my binocular vision,  but in my view I only loose it momentarily and by then I have decided where I am shooting the target and shut my left eye to ensure the gun is in right place!  I have met other shooters that adopt simalar methods who shoot to a good standard  AA and  AAA,  As a newbie all I am saying is the so called " orthodox " way or coached way of shooting clays may not work for us all. And at the end of the day if your comfortable with the way you shoot and your able to compete to a good standard ( competitions) what's the problem?????

A good coach will work with your particular needs, not a script. You seem to have a decent solution I would say. 

 

[Westward]

I think your experience shows that there's no one size fits all solution for dominance problems. There are people who've successfully overcome cross dominance and shoot with both eyes open and without any type of occluder, but most people - and the few coaches I've spoken with - take either the occluder route with spots/patches etc., or they close an eye.

 

[Colin1733]

When started out two and a half years ago my instructor had me closing my left eye. After 18 months of following this advice I was starting to get a bit demoralised as improvement seemed painfully slow. I then decided to take a course of lessons with another instructor, the first thing he said was shoot both eyes open which felt very strange to begin with. However after a couple of lessons my shooting seemed to improve dramatically . Ok I admit the instructor also changed a few other thing do do with how I mounted the gun and where I picked up the target but I feel had I not started shooting both eyes open the other changes would have been less successful, I just see targets better now and seem to be able to calculate lead automatically where as before I had to put much more thought into it and quite often over thinking it resulting in we waving the gun around while I tried to work out how much lead to give it. Obviously I am a relative novice but it might be worth persevering with both eyes open?

 

[Westward]

Vision takes place in the brain, all the eyes do is provide information for the brain to decode and interpret therefore eye dominance is determined neurologically by the brain. There is a relatively new branch of neuroscience that studies neuroplasticity which is essentially what happens to the neurons when we learn and develop new skillsets. In short, the more neurons that are called upon (through training and practice) to fulfill a particular function the better the task is accomplished.  A good example of this is the way that blind people usually have far more sensitive hearing than sighted people.

Theoretically the brain can be trained to overcome cross dominance and shoot with both eyes, but it's a pretty big undertaking that in all probability would be too daunting for most people.