Home Forums Hunting & Shooting The Lefty Forum Advice for left handed kids.

At the risk of boring you, I'll paraphrase a previous post on this topic. Try to teach your kids to shoot from the same shoulder as his dominant eye. [Both my sons are right handed but left eye dominant. I caught that at a young age when they were playing with an old Fisher-Price toy camera. It's easy to check eye dominance, even with young children.]

I am 100% lefty shooter. I have shot virtually every gauge, action and caliber of right handed long gun from my left shoulder - that includes flintlock rifles. Of course, handguns are a different animal. I still prefer and am much more comfortable with a left handed firearm.

For the most part, it doesn't matter in terms of function whether it's a right or left handed long gun. I've learned to overcome the right hand safety, bolt releases, and other controls. Lever and break open actions are almost ambidextrous. Bolts actions, and to some extent semi-autos, are another issue. Shooting a RH bolt from the lefty side does put the shooter at some risk. I have never witnessed it, but should a catastrophic case failure occur (chamber obstruction, case rupture, etc.), a RH bolt rifle vents gases on the right side which is directly in front a left's face. Obviously, we should all be wearing safety glasses at all times.

It's very difficult for a lefty to complete a follow-up shot from the shoulder while using a RH bolt rifle. For me, the reach-over bolt action technique never worked. As you could imagine, a lefty hunting dangerous game with RH rifle would not be recommended.

Believe me, I feel your pain in searching for a left hand bolt action rifle. Supposedly 16% of the population is sinistral. You surely wouldn't know it when it comes to left handed firearms. However (current gun buying issues aside), the selection has improved in the past 50 years. We all pray things get back to normal soon. When they do, Savage and Ruger both offer some great choices in relatively affordable true left hand action RF and CF rifles. Not knowing the level of interest for my boys when they were young, I purchased a T/C Contender, a youth stock and carbine barrels in .22LR, 7/30 Waters and .45 cal muzzleloader chamberings. The Contender is still going strong and will likely be my old man rifle. There are other single shot, break-open options available.

For the most part, those of us in the shooting fraternity want shooters, especially new ones, to enjoy and perpetuate our sport. Without new shooters - our sport and rights will die. Talk to other shooters. Often they'll let you borrow different firearms to try. See what works for your grandson.

Further, if at all possible, teach new shooters to shoot both eyes open, even with a scoped rifle. It's most important for instinctive archery and moving targets (i.e., shotgun games). There are many terrific one-eyed shooters but it's much easier to use your God given binocular vision - with less eye strain - for tracking targets.

Good luck, good shooting and be well. DJB

I ran into this with my son when he was about 4 or 5. Did almost everything right handed but is left eye dominant. I noticed shooting a scoped rimfire 17 HMR. I had already purchased an 870 20ga for him, but he didn't like it. So I went with the BPS for pumps and never looked back. Now he shoots on the high school trap team with his Winchester 101 Pigeon. It was one of the only neutral cast trap guns we could find that he liked and lined up for him. He tried the lefty Citori, but the price was a little too steep and the right hand models had too much cast & palm swell.
This also opened up the idea of looking for left guns, so I played along. Now he has his own lefty 17 HMR, Lefty 257 Roberts, Lefty 7mm-08 and lefty 30-06. Now he just has to pay to "feed" them all.

Hart #4 magnum sporter Remington contour 26 inches

Agreed.

Go with the dominant eye. But I would teach them to be ambidextrous while they are young and before habits are ingrained. It can come in handy for awkward shooting situations and especially if eye dominance changes or an injury occurs. A shotgun I would still go with the dominant eye but let them try both ways.

One thing good about shooting left handed is I am not constantly tempted to get another rifle as there is not a lot of choices out there and I pretty much have all the bases covered sometimes 3X over.

But the key point is that there are choices and many more if you want to spend the $$$ for a custom job. So if one prefers or is required to get a portsider there's no reason not to do so. Remington being out of production seems to have tossed a monkey wrench into the works for both righties and lefties. Wish I'd bought up Midway's stock when they were clearing them out.

I'm left handed and right eyed as well. Anything that requires hand eye coordination is a million times easier for me to learn right handed so I've gotten to the point that I do just about all those things right handed. I shot a bow left handed off and on for probably 15 years and was never good enough with it that I felt comfortable trying to hunt with it, finally tried a right handed bow and groups shrunk in half almost immediately. I'm glad I learned to do most things right handed and would do it the same again.

Describe what you mean by "they are left handed". Do they write with their left hands or pick up a spoon or fork with their left hand? Those activities don't have much to do with eye dominance.


Just curious,but do you ask them when they pick up the rifle why are they putting it up to the right shoulder? If it's not because they see you do it then what would be the reason? Do they just naturally move it to the dominant eye side?

When I was assisting young boy scouts using BB guns, the first item of business was for them to identify their dominant eye. IIRC there were very few left handers from that standpoint. Of course there were no left or right BB guns. The same might hold true for rifle stocks without cheekpieces or other decoration.

No, everyone is not 100% one eye dominant....and most have degrees of dominance, and some to the point of being equally dominant in both eyes...

I like the aesthetics of the barrel contour and length relative to the rest of the rifle. . Looks sharp. I prefer longer, heavier barrels on most of my rifles for the weight forward balance.

This one is heavy enough as it is and most folks would probably not like it as a carry rifle. When I plopped the scope onto it, you could really notice a weight difference.

This one I had made up simply because I had the stock laying around. It's a H S Precision from around 40 years ago. Same Hart #4 mag sporter barrel Rem contour, 26 inches. 6.5-06 Ackley Improved. Makes for a nicer carry rifle. Being afflicted with spinal stenosis makes it tough to do any amount of serious walking for now. I'm working on getting that fixed.

<two thumbs up>

I am right handed and left eye dominant. My Dad is the same, so I learned to shoot as he did, from my left shoulder. I shoot a left hand bow and shoot a shotgun and rifle from the left side as my preference. I have become adept shooting from the right over the years and that works if I close my left eye, but I can only do it at stationary targets. Lots of turkeys seem to sneak in from the “wrong” direction and when hunting a stand I just shoot deer off a particular shoulder based on where the deer comes from. I am certainly more accurate and instinctual shooting using my dominant eye. My son is right handed and “right-eyed” so he is the only shooter in the immediate family who doesn’t shoot what we call “wrong-handed”. LOL

Interestingly, the two guys I hunt with the most besides my dad and son are both lefties but right eye dominant. They shoot right handed. We are thinking about calling our deer hunting place the Wrong Handed Hunt Club!

I say go with the dominant eye, but if they change or develop the ability to shoot either way when they get older, just let that work itself out. The most important thing is to get them shooting! They will figure it out from there.

Left eye dominant right hand everything else. Learned to shoot right hand long guns left handed, damn those right hand safeties. Took years to get over flipping safety from the off side of trigger. Now exclusively left hand guns.

Tried to shoot bow right as all my other family was right dominant. Really sucked at the bow lol and never took it up. I finally bought a left hand bow after 50 years and the difference was remarkable.

Had trouble keeping left eye closed so practice that now in case I have try a right hand shot with rifle from deer stand if I had to. Haven’t had to yet thank goodness.

Hand gun, hold right but can’t over to my left a bit which may not be good. Trying to sort that out yet.

I’d get them shooting off dominant eye side, get them left handed firearms. It will be easier for them and they will learn to live with less selection.

Ambidextrous work helps with a lot of things so they ought to work that in just because the critter might be on that side of the tree.

You are on the wrong forum. They should be shooting right handed guns. Right eye dominant= shoot right handed. Left eye dominant= shoot left handed...

Works for me. Also if left eye dominant use a left handed rifle if available otherwise make do with what you have.

I agree. In todays market, there are many more choices out there than maybe when we were kids. I was handed a sporter m1917 30-06 when I was 12 years old (actually a Christmas present when I was 11, but that was 2 months before my 12th birthday). I continue to love my right handed bolt rifles, but I grew up with them and shot them a lot. You might say I'm a little proficient with such tools. But that only comes with tons of practice. If a guy is not proficient, he needs more practice. A young shooter these days, has no reason not to start off on the right equipment. Dad, if he can afford it, should spend the little extra and buy the left hand option. I have no regrets, using a right handed bolt action rifle, but I've been lucky and have never experienced any major unsafe rifle failure and I always use safety glasses when shooting. Now if we are talking shotguns, I only use left hand eject shotguns. My favorite is my left hand wingmaster. Going back to bolt action rifles, when used from a supported position, there is no right handed shooter that is going to keep up with a good lefty using a right hand bolt. There are pros and cons, like with everything in life.