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

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