Both eyes wide open ?

[bat1]

How many of you shoot with "Both eyes open" ?

How do you shoot, and what is your dominant eye ?

I have left eye dominan , shoot with right hand..

I've been reading a lot about this, and working with it, it seems to take some practice, but I believe it is how I will be shooing for now on

BAT

[HighVelocity]

Shots inside 20 yards I keep bth eyes open. Beyond that, I'll close my left eye. Right handed and right eye dominant. It does take practice to overcome closing one eye if you're already in the habit of doing that. Find a local IDPA club and start shooting IDPA matches. Trying to go faster will make it easier to forget about closing one eye. Worked for me, anyway.

[flintknapper]

Right handed and right eye dominant, both eyes always open.

I will "squint" my left eye slightly when shooting weak hand to avoid that eye competing for focus, and will also "cant" the weapon about 10 deg. to my strong side.

Otherwise, both eyes fully open.

[Excaliber]

How many of you shoot with "Both eyes open" ?

How do you shoot, and what is your dominant eye ?

I have left eye dominan , shoot with right hand..

I've been reading a lot about this, and working with it, it seems to take some practice, but I believe it is how I will be shooing for now on

BAT

I'm left eye dominant and right handed. I shoot with both eyes open.

I have no problems with the sights, and it helps me more quickly see changes in tactical situations than using one eye would allow.

[Liberty]

I shoot one eye a lot I'm working on it, but still find myself reverting to one-eyed when not concentrating.

[Wildscar]

I too have the whole cross eye domanice thing. I try to keep both eyes open but like HV said its kinda hard for targets at distance. And what really freaks people out is when I move from Pistol to Rifle. Becasue I shoot rifles left handed and pistols right handed.

[The Annoyed Man]

I'm left-handed and left eye dominant, but my eyesight is bad enough now at my age that I have to squint to see the front sight; so I tend to shoot with my left eye open, and my right eye squinted but not completely closed. When shooting my AR with a holo-sight, I shoot both eyes open. With peep sights, I shoot left eye open and right eye closed. And with a scope, I shoot with just my left eye open.

Excaliber and Wildscar, my wife is like you - left eye dominant but right-handed. She is a relatively novice shooter and is struggling with just learning how to get a good sight picture. We're trying to get a lot of practice in for her because she'll be taking her CHL class later this month. She even tried shooting left-handed, which she does with greater accuracy than right-handed, but then she has trouble with her dexterity and gun handling. So for now, she is going to concentrate on shooting right-handed so that she can be proficient enough to take the CHL range qualifications, but if any of you left eye/right hand cross dominant folks have any suggestions for her, I would love to see them.

[Crossfire]

Both of the Crossfires are cross-dominant (I guess that's appropriate, right?) Marty is right hand /left eye, and I am left hand /right eye.

Canting the gun to bring it to the correct eye, and slightly moving the head to line up the eye to the gun are both ways of compensating for this.

Most right handed people are not comfortable switching to left handed shooting to compensate for this, but left handed people can usually change to right handed shooting, because, after all, we have spent our whole lives adjusting to a right handed world.

Lots of shooters (even some really good ones) have overcome this. I am sure The Annoyed Woman can too, with a little work.

[Wildscar]

but if any of you left eye/right hand cross dominant folks have any suggestions for her, I would love to see them.

Well you could always go watch the movie Firebirds with Nicolas Cage and use that cure. I just never thought mine was that bad.

There are times that I can switch hands to shoot around some obstacles so really be ambidextrous has an added benefit to being cross eye dominance. One that that someone told me was when acquiring a target was to bring to the pistol up to my site line. Not move my head down to the pistol. I had never noticed it before. But when I was moving my head to aline the pistol I was altering my view of the area and blacked a lot of it with the bill of my hat. If you can keep your head as vertical as possible. Other than that it’s all kind of standard.

[Keith B]

My nephew just got out of basic in the Air Force. He can't close one eye. He could shoot fine with both open, but the rules say they have to shoot with one eye. They ended up doing the pirate thing on him and putting a patch over one eye so he was shooting per their guidelines. He scored 47 out of 50.

As a side note, his Dad is cross-eye dominant and they allowed him to shoot that way when he went through basic years ago (probably just depends on the range master and TI.)

[elwood blooz]

Left eye dominant and right handed. Usually shoot with both eyes open.

[bat1]

My nephew just got out of basic in the Air Force. He can't close one eye. He could shoot fine with both open, but the rules say they have to shoot with one eye. They ended up doing the pirate thing on him and putting a patch over one eye so he was shooting per their guidelines. He scored 47 out of 50.

As a side note, his Dad is cross-eye dominant and they allowed him to shoot that way when he went through basic years ago (probably just depends on the range master and TI.)

Wow, basic's from the Air Force has a standard to require only to shoot with only one eye I don't think this would be true for all the services ?

BAT

[Originalist]

There is no rule in the AF that says you have to shoot one eye closed, the CATM guys at Lackland get so used to pushing #'s (600/wk) that they get tunnel vision 1. because it works for most and 2. They have to many close calls to let everyone do something different.

Personally I have never heard of this cross dominance thing. I am left handed but right eye dominant (use to have a lazy eye) so I have adapted to shoot right handed (quite well). One plus is most other things I do left handed so my Weapon hand is always free.

[The Annoyed Man]

Interestingly, although I am left-handed in all other things, I swing a bat (or golf club) right handed. If I could learn to shoot right handed, that would certainly be poetic now, wouldn't it?

[pedalman]

Being a right-hander, I would always use my right eye, and keep the left eye closed. It drove me crazy to keep my left eye scrunched shut. I started keeping both eyes open when I found out my left eye was dominant.

After the epiphany, I always shoot with both eyes open. The down side is that I suck at shooting with a long gun.