Eye Dominance

We recently had a client book in for pre season shooting coaching. Bill was in his 70's and had been shooting all his life, but he had started to have trouble hitting driven birds and couldn't understand why.

The first thing we do is to check gun fit (OK in this case) and then check for master eye. Bill was adamant that he was right handed and right eyed, but we checked him anyway. You guessed it – his eye dominance had changed to his left eye, with the consequence that he was shooting to the left of the target every time. Problem solved and we get another happy client.

The moral of this story is to check for your master eye if your shooting suddenly goes to pot.

How to check for your Master Eye

Get hold of an old CD and with both eyes open focus on a distant point – the top of a tree, a flag pole, anything that you can see easily. Now with the CD in your hand, keeping focussed on the target, raise the CD so that you are looking through the central hole at the distant object. Then bring the disk back to your eye keeping your focus on the target, (still with both eyes open), and you will find that the disc goes back to your master eye.

• If you are right handed and right eyed – shoot with both eyes open.

• If you are right handed and left eyed, close the left eye when you shoot.

• If you are left handed and left eyed – shoot with both eyes open.

• If you are left handed and right eyed, shoot with the right eye closed.

Just to complicate matters, if you are right handed and right eyed, and are swinging on a bird going from left to right, it is possible that your left eye sees the side of the barrels and will take over. The same is true if you are left handed and left eyed on a right to left crosser, your right eye can take over. The answer in this case is to shoot with one eye closed, so if you are left handed close the right eye, if you are right handed close the left eye.

You may ask why you should shoot with both eyes open. I liken it to driving your car in traffic with one eye closed. It becomes difficult to judge distances and speed. The same with a clay pigeon. You need to focus on the target and have both eyes open so that you can track it and get its trajectory and speed right.

Good shooting...