Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors Poll: Are you a right or left handed shooter

As a follow up to CTW's posting on installing a left hand safety...

How I shoot hand guns and long guns... single choice
	Both right handed
	Long guns right handed, hand guns left handed
	Long guns left handed handed, hand guns right handed
	Both left handed
Votes accepted starting: 12/11/17
View Results

Shoot left handed, Left eye Dom. but right handed, can shoot right hand also!

Same here, left eye dominant but right handed. And I shoot rifles both right handed or left handed as long as it has a scope, also. It's just the open or peep sights that I need to do left handed. Well, I can do a peep sight right-handed if I have a patch on my left eye. That's fine for qualifying, but not really workable in the field.

The most frustrating students of trap/skeet shooting I ever dealt with were a couple guys who were right handed but left eye dominant. It was hell getting them them to learn to shoot left handed- that can be learned by most, with difficulty, but you simply can't reverse the eye dominance. To hit moving targets with any degree of consistency one must swing the gun on the same side shoulder that the dominant eye is on.

I'm also "cross-eyed"--strongly right handed and strongly left eye dominant (this is called "cross-dominance" but I don't use that term much....). Took me years and truckloads of missed easy wingshots to figure it out, but now I just shut my left eye when shooting handguns and put a little tape dot on the focal point of my left eye on my shooting glasses when bird hunting. Both work fine and my efforts to learn to shoot left handed were simply scary dangerous!

Remove my left hand and I won't survive long.

I'm what used to be the norm, right eye dominant and shoot right-handed.
As a hunter ed teacher for over 30 years, I can tell you the number of left eye dominant right-handed shooters is increasing. Why??? Possibly more awareness, although we always tested for it in class? Easy to make work with rifles, use a scope or peep sight. Shotgun shooting still causes problems as students only shoot for 1 or 2 days with class and can't learn to shoot left handed that fast. Shooting glasses with 1/2" dot in center of left lens helps but hard to get shooters to use. And I have no clue how pistol shooters work it out as we never shot pistols them in class.

I shoot and write Lefty. I do everything else right handed.

I hang low and left.

Right eye dominant ,shoot right never tried to shoot lefty

I went through hunter safety in Junior High and it was never mentioned. Tried bird hunting for 7 years and sucked before I finally went off to Basic Training and learned my problem. I really don't think that many people knew about this back then.

To All,

As a southpaw, I wonder how many of the right-handed but left eye dominent folks were "changed" to using the right hand as young children.

yours, tex

It happens, and somebody who is fairly ambidextrous to start with can make the switch to right handed. But eye dominance is not physically or genetically linked to hand dominance, they usually match but not always. I'm very left eye dominant, and also very right handed - trust me that I was never, ever possibly left handed. Two of my 3 boys are right-handed and right-eye dominant, the youngest is like me.

Mom said I was a lefty as a little one , but was made to use stuff right handed. when I was almost 18 I broke my right Elbow on a dirt bike, it was screwed togather, so I was in a cast for most of 9 months. was easy to do stuff left handed.

I am left handed with about everything.
I am right eye dominant so I have shot right handed guns all my life. Thank god my dad was smart enough to test me before letting me shoot.
I will shoot a magnum revolvers with my left hand and aim with my right eye because my left hand and wrist are stronger.

RH

Right eye dominant, but ambidextrious with rifle and shotgun. I shoot handguns with the right hand, shotguns I prefer the left side but can break them with the right as well, rifles I have switched from left to right due to getting into shootin M1 Garands, and M1A's. I didn't fill out the questionaire due to the lack of options.

Calhoun,

When I was in 1st grade, "Mrs Short" used to make me try to write right-handed & paddled me, if she caught me using my left hand.

My mother found out & that "conversion attempt" came to a screeching halt. = I just wonder how many other kids that that happened to.

yours, tex

Shoot, throw, write, eat, etc. lefty, but I play the guitar right-handed

Hmmmmmm...

All you lefties are in good company. A partial list of famous people who are also left handed: Obama, Bill Clinton, John McCain, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Hugo Chavez, NY Mayor Bloomberg, Oprah Winfrey. Just saying...

I do everything the right way



PS: cept one thing. My mother taught me to wipe with the hand I didn't eat with, which she no doubt learned form her mother and her mother and her mother and so on and so on. Suspect that was a left over skill taught to youngin's by their mothers from generations long ago.

I may have been converted from left to right. As an adult I found out that my Mother considered being left handed a serious handicap. I think my first grade teacher had a hand in it too. I am strongly left eye dominant, shoot left handed and do things that I would have learned at an early age right handed. No one checked me for eye dominance. I don't think I heard about it until I started shooting competition in GTMO. I remember switching a toy rifle from one shoulder to the other and settling on left as being more comfortable. Everything else that requires aiming, shooting pool, shooting a slingshot or bow and arrow I automatically took up doing left handed. Interesting thread. David

The catholic grade school I attended told me left handed people are satanic. They told me they should cut off my left and make me use my right. They were overflowing with compassion and understanding. So.... I have an excuse for my degenerate ways.

I am left handed, right eye dominant. For some unknown reason, when I pick up a gun, I always feel more comfortable shooting right handed. Doesn't feel bad shooting lefty and sometimes do at the range in case its more practical in the field. Got a deer or two shooting southpaw cause necessity dictated. Left handers are much more adaptable than righties. We have to live in a right handed world. Micrometers, scissors are prime examples. Lefties are more ambidextrous out of necessity. Most right handers I know are useless with their left hand.

Dammmm Gary. You sure know how to hurt a fellow.
Leornado DaVinci, Michelangelo, Jimmi Hendrix, Babe Ruth, Me to balance out the lefty scale a wee bit.

You forgot to add...Obama to the list.

Regarding "conversion," I used to work with an economist from Pakistan who had been "converted" from a natural lefty to a full-bore righty. In the Pakistani religious madrasa that he attended before coming to the US and attending NYU, they simply beat his left hand until he COULDN'T use it for anything delicate like writing or eating. After a few weeks of that, he was right-handed for everything but wiping....

Reagan was left handed.

Shoot handguns/rifles left handed. Left eye dominant.

Started guitar and bow right handed in the late 1970s (about 12 yo) for the same reasons. The only guitars and bows around my house we’re my older brothers, and he’s right handed. I remember asking him if I could restring his guitar inverted (to make it left handed), his reply was something like: “only if you want me to break your fingers”. I’m a pretty decent guitar player and archer. I’m not going to lie, 3 bows and 30 + years later, it’s STILL weird using my right eye through the peep sight on my bow string. I’m too old/far in to change to “lefty” now.

One last note. I HAD to learn (younger than guitar/bow) how to use right handed scissors, because left handed scissors are rare, and any lefty knows, if you try to cut paper with right handed scissors in your left hand, it just “flips” the paper (won’t cut it).

Don’t even get me started on slicing bread with serated knives, or trying to write on the right page of loose leaf binders. :-) -TomT

The plains Indians were more gentle than the "Pakistani religious madrasa", they just tied the kids hand behind his back until he learned to do everything right handed.

Eat, write, shoot a long gun, or bow LH, throw, kick or any physical sport RH. Left eye dominate.
I can shoot a hand gun with either hand, but my right is stronger, steadier, so mostly shoot a handgun right handed.
My first handgun was a Single-Six and I bought a LH holster for it. When I was younger I was about equal with either hand, shooting pistolas.

Google states 10% of the population is left handed. So far, out of 60 replies 40% report that they shoot long guns left handed. I wonder if this is because the 99 is popular with left handed shooters?

Interesting deduction! Makes sense.

As a guitar player I have always felt that guitars are named backwards. Your strumming or picking hand does a lot less technical work than your fretting hand. If you can not get your fretting hand to play complicated cords quickly and precisely it does not matter what your strumming, picking or bowing hand does. Why use your weak hand for the hard part? It takes two hands to play the instrument.

Wikipedia reports that 1/3rd of the population is left eye dominant. So 40% shooting long guns left handed isn't too incorrect.

Now, if you'd split out rifles and shotguns you probably would get more right-handers on rifles. Scopes simply allow a lot of left eye dominant people to shoot very well using their right eye.

RH and right eye dominant. Fit Italian suits and O/U shotguns off the rack.

I'm right handed both hand and eye.

Righty here

I thought I replied, but I don't see it. Another righty, Joe.

I see your point Whackem-Stackem, never really thought of it like that before. Apparently,’I’ve been doing it right all along 😁 (pun intended). -TomT

Shooting rifles I am nearly 100% left handed.

Shooting handguns I am about 2/3 left handed & 1/3 right handed even though I shoot a handgun slightly better right handed.

Mike