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#9218573 09/30/14
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hatari Offline OP
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Not a strictly African topic, but I like the advice here more than other forums.

Time to teach my 12 y.o son to bird hunt. He is right handed, but left eye dominant. Choices:

1.) Put a dot on his shooting glasses over the dominant eye
2.) teach him to shoot left handed
3.) other

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#2 for sure.


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I don't mean to confuse the issue but I'm left-handed but right eye dominant. I shouldn't be good with a shotgun but I'm quite a good bird shot. When shooting handguns with the usual arms-extended-stance, I'm left handed again but use my right eye.

I'm just an example of one that shows that without formal instruction and advice in the beginning, I learned to compensate and be successful despite doing everything wrong.

I agree with Tom though that the best way is starting him out right (meaning left grin).

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#2 he plays ball and very well, so he should pick it up easy enough


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#2

Of course awkward at first, it will become second nature in no time.



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#3 other

Sorry but I don't agree with teaching him left handed. Teach him to use his right eye as his dominate eye since he's been doing everything right handed to date.

Example: My wife is left hand dominate but has what is called switch eye dominate...when a bird approches from the right she sees it with her right eye and then she is right eye strong. If the bird comes from the left than her left eye is strong. Needless to say she has a very hard time with a right to left crosser..shooting behind the bird most of the time unless she closes her right eye just before the shot.

To pick on her further when she went to a teach pro golfer to learn to play golf. The teaching pro decided to teach her right hand even after she told the pro she was left handed. Frankly it was a disaster. To this day my wife plays golf left handed after I tought her to play.

Eyes can be taught to be dominate...just get him a 22 rifle with a scope on it and let him shoot it right handed. BUT he must shoot it with BOTH eyes open & with his right looking through the scope. Before you know it his right eye will become dominate...it just needs to learn it is supposed to be dominate or the stronger eye.

I see this a lot in the industry I work in. Guys try to switch from right hand to left hand because someone told them that they have a left eye dominance. It's a nightmare. I teach how to make the dominate strong side to be stronger. For some all it takes is a slight squint of the non-dominate side eye at the moment of the shot to verify they are looking at the target with the right eye. Or conciously looking at the center of the center of anything oval and concentrate using your dominate side eye.
No need for tape on your glasses. If you do that just teach him to shoot with his left eye closed...the down fall to that is I feel in order to shoot well you need your binocular vision to be able to judge distance. Not to mention the fatigue issuse.

Besides Lefty's have a much harder time finding guns, bows, golf clubs, etc. Some even buy right handed guns and shoot them left handed. You want to talk a poor fitting gun.

My opinion, it's your son not mine, do as you feel is right for your son. And not what everybody else thinks.

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The second to the last paragraph of your opinion is undoubtedly true!

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There are degrees of eye dominance and until you have and idea re how much, it could be 1 or 2. Until then 3 is the correct answer.

Some have central vision and neither eye is strongly dominant, in which case you may have him shoot left handed and the problem will still exist.

Changing a strongly dominant eye to become the non-dominant eye is a task that few will accomplish.

With a lot of shooting some have learned to shoot from the non-dominant shoulder with a shotgun. If they start young and shoot a whole bunch of a lot, the brain may be able to figure the correct subconscious pictures. Most never shoot enough.

Studies have shown that in hitting a baseball there are advantages to being cross dominant. I.E. when batting right handed with a dominant left eye, the left eye picks up the ball and locks onto the ball easier than the right eye of a right hand/right eye hitter. It has to do with head positioning from the start and maintaining head position until completion of the swing.

Originally Posted by Wild_Bill_375
For some all it takes is a slight squint of the non-dominate side eye at the moment of the shot to verify they are looking at the target with the right eye.


Perhaps may be the best choice of all. Some highly accomplished shotgunners without eye dominance issues still do the same.

Last edited by battue; 09/30/14.

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Hatari,
It really depends how serious the shotgunning we're talking about. If you want him to go to the Olympics, then he will need to learn to shoot with his left, because the difference in shooters are THAT small.
But if we're talking hunting, I think its negligible and want to second that of the posters above who think he should just practice right handed.


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hatari Offline OP
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We are talking doing some bird hunting.

We have an interesting cross section of opinions. Certainly no consensus.


"The Democrat Party looks like Titanic survivors. Partying and celebrating one moment, and huddled in lifeboats freezing the next". Hatari 2017

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Some of the best Shotgun Shooters in the World shoot with the Magic Dot.

If he's never shot ANY LONG GUN at all, I'd try the left-handed routine. If he has experience with rifles off of the right shoulder, go with the dot.

The Dot has to be put on the lens (shooting glasses) by someone with the experience to do so. And even then, I have had Master Class buddies "peek" around the dot.

Both eyes open and use the Dot!


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Hatari,

i was lucky many moons ago that my father let me learn my way and handles different shotguns.

i had the luck too to be in a shooting club where they teach the natural way and not forcing.

i was left handed with left eye as a dominant and im still those days left handed.

the easiest will be to find a BPS (bottom eject) are the other shotguns will be a little more expensive or hard to find.

Phil

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I am firmly in #2 group. I can't imagine walking around hunting with tape over my master eye. Maybe it works for shooting at a range, but not hunting.

Years ago--back when rifles were OK on college campuses, there was a really well designed research study at Penn State. They took a large number of beginning marksmanship students and divided them up so that some learned to shoot rifles based on "handedness" and others based on master eye. The results were statistically significant that the master eye students shot higher scores. This was with .22lr position shooting. I think the effect with shotgun would be even higher.

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Originally Posted by hatari
We are talking doing some bird hunting.

We have an interesting cross section of opinions. Certainly no consensus.


In the context of what I opined above (and my right eye dominant and left hand situation), I grew up in NW Iowa in the sixties, a time of plentiful Government Acres (now the diminishing CRP acres). Pheasants were bountiful and in the those "Mayberry RFD days," long before I had a driver's license, I would carry my dad's old H&R 12 ga through town to the railroad tracks on the south end. It was there I killed my first pheasant at twelve or thirteen or something.

As a frosh in college, a friend who had GSPs and I, legally killed very close to two hundred birds in the fall, using every snowfall as an excuse to go and do "field research." In fact it was. My biology term paper consisted of the results of examining the stomach contents of about a hundred birds.

Perhaps my right eye dominance isn't as dominant as one can be over the other as intimated above by others, but as soon as I realized what the correct sight-picture for a solid hit looked like, I never struggled again (that's certainly not to say I never missed again). This was with inexpensive shotguns and even as I graduated to better and more expensive ones with cast-off stocks (better for a right hander) that I was ignorant of, I never had a gun that I couldn't regularly hit with.

I now shoot mainly SxSs with cast neutral stocks. I'm not meaning to negate the finer points of cast, eye dominance, and so on in the formative instructive years in leading to reaching one's potential in wing shooting. I am a fine field, wing shot but would probably be beaten in formal sporting Clays competition by the best and maybe badly. As in many endeavors, there is very little difference between very good and excellent but the difference is in paying attention to those details.

Perhaps, see what your son does spontaneously when handling different shotguns and firing at some clay pigeons, not only in the air but stationary on the ground. I wouldn't force him into something that feels totally unnatural to him but there are some real disadvantages to "going lefty" in the gun world too.

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As Ingwe say's option #2. If he is just starting, left hand shooting to begin with will save him a lot of aggravation down the road. I have a skeet shooting friend, who after years of shooting right handed and being left eye dominate decided to make the transition. It took a while but eventually it helped his scores.

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Did some snap shooting with a BB gun at plastic balls tossed in the air. Tried both righty and lefty. He had hits from both sides, maybe a few more lefty. Might try some more today.


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As a once almost neighborhood menace with a BB gun, I have no doubt it greatly helped my rifle shooting later on. Depending on the ambient light and head position on the stock you could often see the BB go, hit or miss. Either way it was very instructive. If he finds he can hit from the right despite left eye dominance, it may be the more practical route to keep him there.

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Originally Posted by George_De_Vries_3rd

As a once almost neighborhood menace with a BB gun, I have no doubt it greatly helped my rifle shooting later on. Depending on the ambient light and head position on the stock you could often see the BB go, hit or miss. Either way it was very instructive. If he finds he can hit from the right despite left eye dominance, it may be the more practical route to keep him there.


That's what I'm thinking. I'm showing him a basic version of Instinct Shooting I was taught.

Here's a story about the method:

http://pointshooting.com/qk.pdf

Check it out.

With a 30 minute refresher, I can shoot dimes out of the air with regularity with a BB gun. Ping pong balls get to be no challenge. The guy who once taught me would shoot BB's out of the air. He couldn't do it every time, but he didn't ever practice either. That is impressive.


"The Democrat Party looks like Titanic survivors. Partying and celebrating one moment, and huddled in lifeboats freezing the next". Hatari 2017

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Thanks, very interesting!

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hatari Offline OP
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"The Democrat Party looks like Titanic survivors. Partying and celebrating one moment, and huddled in lifeboats freezing the next". Hatari 2017

"Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid." Han Solo
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An update here. Got together with a guy who coaches a youth Sporting Clays National Team.
He was all for going lefty at this age. Within an hour, he had my son busting about 60% of the clays lefty. So Left Handed it is.


"The Democrat Party looks like Titanic survivors. Partying and celebrating one moment, and huddled in lifeboats freezing the next". Hatari 2017

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Well, good. It's known among some but should be common knowledge that left handers are most often Mensa candidates. I try not to push it but... grin

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oh, brother!!! wink


"The Democrat Party looks like Titanic survivors. Partying and celebrating one moment, and huddled in lifeboats freezing the next". Hatari 2017

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laugh

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