Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Bifocals and hunting

I had the same problem with my last pair of progressive glasses. I had to turn my head like an owl because the peripheral portion of the glasses were so blurry. This time I got progressives for everyday and a set of more sturdy glasses with the old style bifocal for hunting. It has been great. My vision is clear from rim to rim and the bifocals let me see my watch, GPS, etc... Go with a second set.

Traditional bifocals are less problematic.

You can hold your face still and look through all areas of the lense.

However, I personally just keep my bifocals at work and use a single vision pair of glasses while driving or shooting, as I can read a menu, computer screen, etc. simply by removing my single vision glasses.

Also at home I enjoy leaning back in my recliner while watching TV and find this is another use where the single vision is superior to bifocals. The reclined position practically forces a guy to look through the bottom portion of lense to view TV.

Your lenses aren't made right. I have trifocal lenses without lines and I can look all the way left or right and see perfectly without turning my head. I used to have the problem you describe when I bought the cheapest glasses I could find from places like Sear's, Sam's, Lenscrafters, etc. I bought the last 2 pairs at the doctors office where I had my exam and they are the best glasses I've ever had.

I had the exact same problem. I use my no line glasses for everyday wear and switch to a par of lined ones for hunting.

Terry

I got my first pair of glasses about ten years ago. I found I had been living with slight astigmatism my entire life, but it was the far sighted thing that drove me into the optician's office. I started having trouble with paper work at the factory.

It took me a couple months to learn to properly aim the progressive bifocals at what I was trying to see. On the other hand, there is a sweet spot for any distance.

The only time I really cuss the progressives is when shooting through a scope. They give me a great deal of distortion around the periphery of the scope. And my group sizes are a bit larger when shooting with the progressives.

I have a pair of straight vision glasses with correction only for the astigmatism. They work much better when shooting scoped rifles.

I discussed this situation with my optometrist a couple months ago when I got my last pair of glasses. It turns out he is a shooter also. His recommendation is a single lens distance correction, tinted yellow, for most shooting situations.

I have found that a set of 'perfectly' round lenses without astigmatism correction in my dominant eye helped with scope distortion. Like another poster here, I tend to look across my nose. I never did learn to square my head with the scope.

However, as Mule Deer indicated, they do tend to fog up when hiking.

The best remedy I found was to get soft contact lenses without astigmatism correction. I need bifocals and astigmatism correction for reading, but found that they were not so important for the field.

Bump for my gray hair and fading vision. Good thread. I can't get use to the progressives. The lack of peripheral is the main issue, especially when getting behind a scope. Never tried bifocals but I'm thinking they may work better for me. If I can see to arms length all should be good. I HATE the restricted peripheral, and see little use for the in-between benefit of progressives, as a matter of fact it leads to motion sickness. The old man dead giveaway of bifocals is alright.

I tried progressive bi-focals when I was first diagnosed withthe need for bi-focals and had problems like you describe. I have worn traditional lined bi-focals ever since and would never go back to progressives.

I've worn bifocals for about 15 years, always worn progressives, no problems. Took a bit of getting used to, less than a week I'm sure. I wouldn't wear anything else.

I’ve had bifocals for many years and my glasses have large lenses with no bottom frame (just a nylon line holding the lens in). I feel like they give me pretty good peripheral vision and I have fairly large “reader” section so they’re pretty good for handgun sights too.

navlav, bifocals don't obstruct peripheral. Transition lens have distortion on the outer edges of the lens. It is my understanding that there is no way to make them without the distortion.

I think loss of peripheral vision has more to do with lens shape than it has to do with progressive vs bifocal.

I spend a lot of time driving a forklift in a busy warehouse/production area with LOTS of pedestrian traffic all around my lift truck. My peripheral vision is critical to the safety of those around and behind me.

My safety glasses have fairly large lenses, but they are flat vs wrap around. I have very good vision out the sides, behind the lenses of my glasses.

I have worn bi-focals or progressive lens for 20 years now. One thing not mentioned is progressives create a sweet spot for middle distances like working at a computer. Regular bi-focals are more difficult to use for me sitting at the computer. For great glasses that are fairy inexpensive Costco gets my vote. They also listened to me and lowered the start of the reading prescription which helps shooting and watching television from a fully reclined recliner.

I surrendered! I'm 70 and been fighting it for 10yrs especially with binos. When I need to, I push my glasses up on my head. I've considered buying pince nez, or cheap glasses on a neck strap specifically for hunting. Slip 'em off and on, and don't worry about dropping them. capt david

Thankfully, I can still focus my scopes so I can hunt without any glasses, except for the readers in my pocket. At the range, and for stuff like bird hunting, I wear safety glasses with "cheaters" on the bottom, +3 in my case. I also picked up some sunglasses at Costco with +2.75 cheaters, which I wear to drive.

I tried the transitional lenses some years back, but the style I bought was too small, which made the sweet spot for any distance hard to find. I've been living with readers from Amazon for quite a while now for general use, but am due for an exam (overdue) and hopefully my doctor will fix me up. She only sells glasses as a sideline, so won't push me into a pricey mistake like the last outfit. Whatever I get, it wont be coated. The coating on my last pair got scratched up and according to the seller, couldnt be done over. I treat my drugstore glasses with about as much care as a hammer, and they havent scratched at all.

Progressive lens cause some problems and others little because of the varying degrees of progression, along with the size of lens you choose. Close and far correction is usually not a problem, but trying for close, medium and far correction can. I also found the progression line area was not distinct, like with lined glasses and it was more difficult to find the sweet spot of correction.

I tried them, close for reading, medium for computer, far for distance and quickly realized for shooting they were not even close to a good choice. For walking around they were ok, but not worth the hassle.

Shooting and hunting gets shooting glasses. Walk around gets old school bifocals. Computers have this nice feature where you can adjust the print size.

Addition: last pair of shooting glasses were made with a small bifocal down on the bottom edge. Should have done it years ago.

I wear progressives and like them for general use. I do have issues with them when using a scope. I find it difficult to get the right section of the lens in place so that I get a full view through the scope. When bent over at the bench or some improvised field positions I only see a donut hole view, a small circle in the middle surrounded by black. Anyone else have this issue? I guess I'll need to get straight full distance glasses and keep readers handy. Sigh, that's what drove me to progressives in the first place!

You guess?

No you don’t need readers. Just a set of decent size regular glasses with bifocals.

Addition: problem some have with regular gasses and shooting, is when they drop their head for a cheek weld they are looking thru the top edge of smaller regular glasses. Which causes a distortion along with not looking thru the sweet spot of best correction.

Solution is shooting glasses or larger daily wear glasses.

All progressives are NOT created equal. There are traditionally surfaced, digitally surfaced, some are surfaced on the front, some on the back, and some use a combination of front and back. There are also not many "universal" rules that apply to everyone because prescriptions vary greatly. At best, you get fairly loose "rules of thumb". Loose rules of thumb that more or less apply to everyone:

1. Traditionally surfaced lenses are going to be less expensive and have greater availability for very complex prescriptions.
2. Traditionally surfaced lenses are going to offer the smallest "sweet-spot" in all 3 (distance, intermediate, near) viewing zones.
3. Digitally surfaced lenses offer less distortion in every part of the lens
4. Front side surfacing tends to have a fairly short and narrow corridor which makes your reading zone easy to find but may be challenging and fairly narrow at computer/newspaper distances.
5. Back side surfacing tends to have a longer and wider corridor which can sometimes create a challenge finding your reading zone as it may get pretty low, especially in a large frame
6. Back-side and dual surfaced lenses offer the optician (or optometrist) more customizations to fitting the visual needs of the patient within any given frame
7. Surfacing both sides tends to offer the least amount of peripheral distortion, most amount of customization, and the higher your correction needs are, the more apparent this will be, but it does cost more.

Folks who have very low or no need for glasses in the distance will also have the least amount of peripheral distortion in any progressive lens. It doesn't matter if they order the cheapest or most expensive lenses, someone with little to no distance prescription is going to have less distortion than say someone who's got a distance prescription of say +/- 2.50 or more, they're just plain lucky. Where a person with very little to no distance prescription struggles with progressive lenses is they often hold out until they need quite a bit of intermediate and near add power (+1.75-+2.00) which is a lot to throw at someone who's gone 50+ yrs without ever wearing glasses. That's the downside to using "cheaters" for a decade or more.

Folks who've worn glasses long-term typically move into a progressive lens when their add power needs are far lower (1.25-1.50) and it's an easier and quicker change to make.

The comment about wearing different correction in them is interesting. You may or may not know that they make bifocal contact lens so may want to look into them. I wear them and the only problem I have is reading really small print and working with small items / parts. At that point I just use a pair store bought cheaters.

Thanks

358Win