can you guess
- Thread starter Walter Haas
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im An odd one. I keep both eyes open with an iron sighted rifle. Left eye shut with a scopes rifle. And left eye shut when using a pistol. Just realized recently that I did all of this. It’s just what my body does naturally out of comfort I guess. ??
Sorry. I meant right eye shut when using a pistolim An odd one. I keep both eyes open with an iron sighted rifle. Left eye shut with a scopes rifle. And left eye shut when using a pistol. Just realized recently that I did all of this. It’s just what my body does naturally out of comfort I guess. ??
i shoot with both eyes open way less eye fatigue...same thing comparing binos to a spotting scope...takes awhile to get use to.
I shoot with both eyes open, but left eye squinted. I’m right handed, but left eye dominant, so I slightly close my dominant eye to close down the info coming into my brain from this eye. I am only slightly left eye dominant though, so even if I switch to weak side shooting, I still need to squint my right eye.
Both eyes open for me all the time. Eye dominance does play a factor in that, I'm one of the lucky ones there as I'm right handed and right eye dominant
I didn't know what eye dominance was until I read this but I just took a few tests and I'm right handed and also right eye dominant. But why do I need to keep both eyes open? I'm aiming toward being just a bench rest shooter, not tactical or hunter. It seems easier to close my left eye. It seems to reduce what I have to concentrate on.
If you close one eye, you will have some sympathetic eye movement and your other eye will squint to some degree.
Closing/squinting eyes uses unnecessary muscles and you will feel fatigue much sooner.
Shoot with both eyes open.
Closing/squinting eyes uses unnecessary muscles and you will feel fatigue much sooner.
Shoot with both eyes open.
As mentioned above, closing one eye induces muscle strain and has adverse effects on your vision after 30 seconds or so. I shoot and train a lot with handguns and the additional field of view provided when using a tool that is almost exclusively a defensive tool should be an obvious advantage that requires no explanation.
On the rifle side, there are a few advantages as well. The first is the fatigue mentioned. Not a big deal if at the range plinking, but if on a hunt, shooting a competitive stage, or on the battlefield ... being able to sit down behind your rifle and observe or continue strings of fire for longer periods of time without having to rest your eyes is a huge advantage.
The other advantage is in target acquisition. With both eyes open I have a few simultaneous sight pictures at my disposal. I have a natural field of view coming from my left eye, and I have a heavily zoomed and cross-haired sight picture on my right. I can concentrate on either, but the beauty is when I combine the two. What I now have, is a natural sight picture with a cross-hair sitting on top of it that very closely aligns with the actual view through the scope. As long as I can see my target with my natural eye, then snapping the cross-hairs over to it is a piece of cake. All I have to do now is switch my brain to my right-eye sight picture for final adjustments. What this allows, is for me to run significantly more magnification than someone who leaves one eye closed and has to find the target inside his scope's field of view and as a result, has to back out his magnification a lot.
If you can't shoot with both eyes open because you are not yet used to the focus-switching aspect of it, it's easy to fix that. Just lay down behind your scope in a long hallway or looking out the back door or window, and spend 10 minutes identifying your two sight pictures and "playing" with them. Do this a few times and you'll be good to go.
People that are cross-eye dominant have a much harder time. I tend to instruct friends and coworkers on how to shoot, and for whatever reason have quite a few cross-eye dominant people that I've taught so I did some research to find out how to help them, this is the best video I found (and is an excellent video in its own right as Lucas is one of the best handgun and short-range rifle shooters in the world):
TL;DR = Shooting with both eyes open is to shooting, what slow-motion video and not turning around is to explosions.
im An odd one. I keep both eyes open with an iron sighted rifle. Left eye shut with a scopes rifle. And left eye shut when using a pistol. Just realized recently that I did all of this. It’s just what my body does naturally out of comfort I guess. ??
Hahaha I’m exactly the same.
Hahaha I’m exactly the same
I shoot with both eyes closed, JK, It do dominate eye open for irons both for optics 4x and below like RDS-ACOG, anything higher and I blink my left eye, I find the deer or target then squint the left to start centering the shot.
When I first got in the army I got on a multiple lane range, I was used to shooting alone.
Partially due to this once I shot the wrong target doing dominant eye only, ever sense I do the squint it both eyes.
When I first got in the army I got on a multiple lane range, I was used to shooting alone.
Partially due to this once I shot the wrong target doing dominant eye only, ever sense I do the squint it both eyes.
