Eye Dominance

Experienced shooters are aware that we have a dominant eye. Instructors often do tests to help new shooters identify which eye is dominant. I have my students do some aiming drills which often exposes their dominant eye. This is when a right-handed shooter is laying their head down to be able to see the sights with their head tilted to get their left eye lined up with the sights.

I teach the usual best practices. However, I also modify what I teach when I am dealing with students that face some challenges. For example, I was qualifying a student for the Illinois Concealed Carry Permit. He was in his 70’s and had been shooting a long time. When he shot, he had his support hand tightly gripping his shooting wrist. At his age it is quite possible for him to have arthritis. While I was contemplating correcting such an obviously incorrect grip, I looked at the target. He was placing his shots in the 9 and 10 rings consistently. He was clearly proficient with this grip.

Another example is my son, who has Dwane’s syndrome. This disorder prevents his right eye from turning to the right. Instead, his eye sucks into the eye socket. His eyes are also not aligned. To get good depth perception he turns his head slightly. We were at the range shooting together. I noticed that he was cocking his head as he fired. I was just about to tell him to stop shooting so I could give him some instruction when I realized what was going on.

Both these shooters were successfully compensating for physical limitations. A cross-eye dominant shooter may be in the same situation, compensating successfully, at the range. For marksmanship in a static range situation, this may be fine.

However, there are many situations where cross-eye dominant shooting adversely affects the shooters performance, such as IDPA and Cowboy matches. My primary instruction is for self-defense. Seconds count. Accuracy counts.

The human brain, a phenomenal organ, compensates for many things without us even knowing. Everyone has a spot in their retina that has no vision receptors. That is because this is where the optic nerve attaches. The brain compensates for this ‘hole’ in our vision. If you want to see, or not see, this spot, put two dots about 3” apart on a plain piece of paper. Close one eye and stare at the dot on the right for your left eye or the left for your right eye. Move the paper in towards your face. Keep staring at the dot. You will be able to see the other dot in your peripheral vision. As the paper gets closer the other dot will disappear. You can move the paper back and forth and watch the dot come and go.

The concept of a dominant eye assumes one eye is providing your brain better information, so it takes priority over what you see. I’ve done the dominant eye test (many of them) and have had my dominant eye change from right to left and back to right again. There must be something else going on. One factor is age. As I get older my eyes are ageing also, as to be expected.

Our brains rely upon binocular vision. Our brain needs two eyes for depth perception. Even though we can demonstrate one eye is dominant, not having two sources of vision input negates depth perception.

What do we do with this information? First, we need to recognize left eye today may not be left eye tomorrow. As different physiological effects change our eyes we need to adjust our shooting. We must be able to see our sights and the threat (target) to have a good sight picture.

What if we could train our brain, build neural pathways, to have both eyes focus on the sight picture? I’m not suggesting we have one eye focus on the front sight and the other on the threat. I’m suggesting that we can train our brain to accept input from both eyes.

As a commercial driver I have to pass a DOT physical. In this physical my vision is tested three times. First each eye is tested independently. Then I am given a third test with both eyes working together. On the surface it makes sense to test both eyes together since I don’t anticipate driving with one eye closed. But in retrospect I get an Ahah! moment. Each eye on its own had unique values. Both eyes together demonstrated the synergy of binocular vision.

Many shooters shoot with one eye closed. There are training devices that occlude one eye or the other. Some instructors use tape or Vaseline over a lens in the shooters eye protection. All to help the shooter concentrate on the dominant eye.

I teach that a self-defense situation requires both eyes open to give the greatest field of vision. Closing one eye also closes off half of the peripheral vision. This prevents threat identification on that side.

There is an instructor, Mike (Ox) Ochsner, who teaches a program (https://visiontraining.com) to train the brain to focus both eyes on the same point. He uses a string with knots in it. This string is put on the shooter’s nose and the shooter focuses on beads or knots along the length of the string. The goal is to see the string in each eye leading up to the knot or bead. This gives the appearance of two strings that meet at the target knot or bead. With several beads along the string the brain can learn to keep both eyes working together.

My recommendation is to shoot with both eyes open. Test yourself often for eye dominance. Train your brain to use both eyes. This will get you on target quicker.