Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Kids at the Campfire Right handed, left eye dominant

Hi all,

My 9 year old daughter has recently taken a interest in shooting at the range with me (which is awesome). It didn't take me long to notice that she is left eye dominant, but right handed. I tried having her shoot with her right eye instead of left, but it wasn't comfortable for her. We also tried shooting left handed. Neither one seemed all that natural.

I'm sure others have encountered this. Can you chime in on what has worked best for you in the past? Thanks.

SS

Left handed would be my choice. I teach hunters safety, and that is the first thing we look for, out and the range. It will take some getting use to, she can handle it, especially at that age. I learned how to wright left handed, after my stroke.

I am right handed and left eye dominant.
I simply close my left eye when shooting. That is much simpler than learning to shoot left handed.

Myself, son, daughter and wife are all righthanded and left eye dominant. I made the switch to lefthanded after 30 years of shooting. The kids I just started that way and they picked it up quickly. I'd follow the eyes.

I'm left handed, right eye dominant. Dad made me shoot righty with everything. It didn't take long. Down the road it helped with right hand dexterity.

I am right handed left eye dominant and shoot left handed the biggest problem use to be the selection of guns that no longer is a issue. My dad made me shoot right handed when i was young then later on I started shooting lefty, never went back, that whole thing with closing your eye does not help your wing shooting at all.

I say go lefty. It's funny. My daughter is LED as well. She shoots a bow left handed, with no sights. We were shooting air pistols the other night and we both forgot. She was shooting right handed and it wasn't going well. You really should follow the eye. With shotgun and pistol, I try to teach both eyes open, but still that gun should be near the dominant eye.

my youngest son was a right handed, left eye dominate kid and i just made him shoot left handed. i explained the reason why to him and he agreed it would be best. it took awhile but now he doesn't give it a thought.

Thanks all. Sounds like shooting left is the consensus. I was really hoping that wasn't the case as all my rifles are right handed. Right handed bolt actions are workable left I suppose.

SS

They should not be! Those gas ports out there on the side of most bolt guns can put a lot of junk in your eye very quickly! They are placed on the expected-to-be offside for a reason...

Ask KKAlaska about it...

I'm right handed with a left master eye.

i can and do shoot from either shoulder but shoot righty most of the time. thing is, there are various degrees of hand and eye dominance and strong hand dominance can trump weak eye dominance. I'd have the kid shoot both ways and see what works best for her.

My son is left handed, right eyed. I started him shooting right handed. Now, at 22yrs old he even carries and shoots a pistol right handed.
My BIL discovered he was left eyed and retrained himself to shoot left handed. He now shoots a shotgun much more consistently and more accurately. He was about 35 yrs old before he discovered his left eye dominance. It took him until the middle of his third dove season (and he shoots a lot of doves) before shooting left handed became natural to him.

Not worth taking a chance safety wise shooting RH rifles LH.

Can buy a lot of LH rifles for the cost of one incident!


Got a piece of a primer in my Right eye shooting a factory round in a RH rifle. Almost went through my cornea. Good eye doc got it out.

Got rid of most of my RH rifles after that.

Were you wearing safety/shooting glasses??? I'd say if the kid is left eye dominant, don't start him off shooting right handed bolt guns. Start him off right with a left handed rifle. This is coming from a guy that was started off wrong and still uses wrong handed rifles.....Bad habbits are hard to break... Like I've said many times, shoot from the dominant eye side. Especially if there's a chance they will be shooting competitively at some point in their lives.. I've seen guys/gals struggle big time because they aren't shooting from the correct side and their dominant eye fights them the whole way. Shooting from the dominant eye side will be much more natural and better in the long run...

i'll happily continue my 'struggles'. laffin' here...

At 9 switch for the win. Only if you are certain.

If not with practice she can still do well with a rifle, but odds are she will always struggle with a shotgun.

Addition: Eye dominance has various degrees.

Unchanging eye dominance.

Mostly unchanging eye dominance. (flips around rarely)

True cross dominance.

True central vision. (neither eye is dominant)

Addition 2.

A comb that is too low can mess with eye dominance. If the dominant eye over the barrel is entirely or partially blocked then the brain will tell the off eye to take over.



Knowing what you are dealing with is knowing how to deal with it.

I've taken many a dollar from idiots like you. Keep struggling, If anything it only makes you look more stupid... Read battues post. Somehow, I know he's btdt. You probably struggle with that too.

the irony is I haven't had to 'struggle' one iota, and I can (and do) shoot from either shoulder at will. crunch time comes, and i'll be using my dominant hand.

I've not lost a dime shooting from either side, and you won't take the first.

This is why my kids both have really nice lefthanded rifles. Shotguns are either lefthanded or over and under.

Was not wearing glasses, took them off as I switched to factory ammo!

First 2 Drs would not try to remove primer 3rd said he thought he could save my eye if I held still!

Primer piece did not fully penetrate the Cornea.

So now I shoot LH rifles and always try to wear safety glasses.

Sam, I grew up untutored and when those things went largely unrecognized or just not addressed. Anyway, I am left-handed and right eye dominant. This is not supposed to work well for shot gunners but being ignorant of that I've become more than a passable wing shot. In fact, quite good.

It's not an issue with scoped rifles either but I do notice it most when handgunning but it hasn't been the handicap some might think.

Maybe that's more encouragement than help.

Both my son and daughter are right handed and left eye dominant.

It's more common than we think. In the old days nobody knew how to tell or cared when they were teaching kids to shoot.

I think most of us know how to recognized it better now.

Teach her to shoot with both eyes open and it will not matter.

Follow the eye usually.

And if you think a rh rifle is no big deal for a lefty, you may be correct, as these kids have learned to adapt, but try closing your right eye and shave with your left hand.

For any new shooter, make it fun and easy. Develop confidence. Add challenges later to keep things interesting. Don't start a new shooter with difficulties they don't need. Eye & ear protection should go without saying.



Explain this to me.

Most shot gunners do it and with a scoped rifle its not any different, plenty of eye relief and concentrate on the target, every thing comes into focus,
your eyes will center much like using a peep.

For you over fifty guys that need cheaters to focus on the cross hairs and target should try it.

You have to make it fun, easy and successful for kids, not stressful.

Or they can find a million other things to do with their time.

"Teach them to shoot with both eyes open and it won't matter" is a dumb ass thing to say...

Not training them for combat.

GFY , why teach them to close an eye? Especially the wrong one!

Did I mention GFY! In the nicest of ways of course.

I can buy it for wingshooting and for instinctive archery, but anything with an aiming device that has to line up three or four points on a single line, I can't agree that anything but the dominant eye is the best choice.

My dad is left eye dominate and right hand dominate. He always shot rifles right handed, shotguns left handed, and handguns right handed with his head tilted for the left eye. He is 80 now and does not shoot do to dementia issues and now his vision is bad.
But he taught himself to over come his condition and was an excellent shot with all three weapons. His off hand rifle shooting was legend in our deer camps......

If you are RE/RH dominant then with both eyes open, point you finger at something 20 yards or so away. Then close the eye doing the pointing-the right dominant eye-and see how far off target your finger moves away from the mark. With a shotgun you would be looking down the left side of the barrel and not directly over the barrel and little good will come of it when shooting a shotgun.

You can get away with shooting off eyed with a scoped rifle, but for most it is the kiss of death with a shotgun. Frank Little is in the Trapshooting HOF and shot with one eye closed because of eye/hand dominance issues. When asked if he would have changed anything in his career, he replied he would have changed sides early in his shooting and shot with both eyes open and matched up his eyes and hands.

Knew one fellow that could shoot a shotgun equally well from either side. Wasn't great, but an ok shotgunner. He was wired a little different than most. Some off sided shotgunners have learned to squint the eye not over the barrel down just slightly right before trigger pull and became better than good.

More than a little BS goes on with everyone of these eye dominant threads. As mentioned there are degrees of eye dominance and the solution for one is not always the same as for another. What Grandpa did to overcome his issue may not be the same for Granddaughter.

I have this same conundrum with my 6yo son. He is RH and appears to be LED, however he also has a little more myopia on the R and could be the reason he prefers the L eye when trying to shoot. Also the combs are usually much lower, so resting his R cheek and using his L eye puts everything in a better lineup.
I will ask him to shoot the airgun R and L hand and see what he prefers.
My brother is also RH/LED and he always struggled to shoot, halfsquiting, contorting his neck, never took for it. He is a beast behind the wheel and awesome race car driver.

6 may be a little to young to be putting the boy to the test. Not sure exactly when all the nerve pathways of eye dominance have been finally laid down.

Then it takes a certain amount of attention span and desire on his part to care about getting it right.

He is very driven to do everything right. Im not intending to force him to do any competitive shooting, but tonsee if he prefers RH or LH shooting with th airgun.
He enjoys it a lot, but I have taught him shooting R eye and RH.
I'd rather have hom learn good technique whichever eye he uses.

I'll vouch for that!

Better start stocking up on right and left handed rifles, Pablo!

Ed

My son is the same way. On the range he shoots with an eye patch over his left eye and does pretty well. In the field, he "winks" his left eye and does pretty well. A positive unintended consequence of "winking" his left eye is that he improved his baseball batting average from around .200 to nearly .700.

So is the greatest pistol shooter in the world, Rob Leatham. You are screwing a kid if you don't compel them to use the same hand as their dominate eye.

@NVhntr, thats an excellent advice. i think it will be easier to have her learn that too

Let her experiment a bit more before making a decision. She is young and as a new shooter can learn to shoot lefty without the transition an entrenched older shooter would have. I may have missed if you are having her shoot irons and scope.

Two things to consider: My sister in law is left eye dominant, right handed. She had not shot much and had been taught by a guy who was not paying attention before she came to visit prior to a deer hunt. She mounted a rifle to her right shoulder and laid her right cheek over the comb to look through the scope with her left eye. I asked her if that was how she normally shot. Yes that was how she had been shooting, mostly a shotgun. All I could think was "Wow that must hurt!" With her cheekbone on top of the stock, the recoil would have been slamming her right under her eye. I might add she is tough as nails. She also did not know any different/better.

Then and there we converted her to shooting left handed so she could properly shoot with her left eye. She ended up with a right hand rifle but deals with it fine.

For me it is different. I have no dominant eye and am pretty ambidextrous. With a handgun I can actually shoot right eye-right hand or left eye-left hand. I could probably shoot a long gun either handed, but because I learned right handed, lefty is awkward. But, because I have no real dominant eye, I have to close one to aim. I find that the eye "obstructed" by the gun and sights or scope is over-ridden by the eye with unobstructed vision. That makes it difficult to aim with sights or a crosshair if I don't close the off-eye. I am not sure, but I think a person left eye dominant trying to shoot right handed might have the same problem with trying to keep their dominant eye open and still actually aim with their non-dominant eye.

For a kid, I vote go with the dominant eye.

Another thing to consider, I think you mentioned that her needing to shoot lefty was problematic because all your rifles are right hand. If you want and expect her to enjoy shooting, get her her own rifle. She needs something to fit her. That includes size and handedness. Most women and girls are forced to struggle with stocks that are too long. Being of smaller stature, I can vouch for the fact that groups can be immediately improved if the length of pull is altered to fit the shooter. Aiming is much more difficult when you can't ever see out of the whole field of view of a scope. A novice shooter may assume this is "normal" and not tell you they are having this problem. Another consideration is that most women have smaller faces, and so the comb height to scope height proportion can be a problem. This would be magnified in a 9 year old kid, girl or boy. What happens with that (personal observation due to my own size) is that you have to raise your head and not get much of a cheek weld on the stock because you can only look out the bottom half of a too-high scope with proper cheek positioning. FOr me certain stocks work, and others don't. Getting a stock comb riser (elastic with varying thicknesses of foam) can also solve this problem without a permanent change to a stock.

Progressive fitting as she learns and improves could pay dividends in her success, your pleasure, and having her join the ranks of active shooters.

Always go with the dominant eye. Good that one checked. Most folks "assume" and subsequently some start their kids wrong.

This , i've reached master in Nra silhoutte matches doing such , and shot most ever thnig damn fine doing such . the hardest to deal with is skeet/trap