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

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