Eye Dominance Observations In Shotgun Shooting

After teaching professionally for years, I have become well acquainted with eye dominance issues. I have found that many instructors mistakenly determine that shooters who miss to the left side of the target are cross-eye dominant. Widely used, standard eye dominance tests are unreliable because they can too easily be manipulated. Many people would prefer to be cross-eye dominant because they don’t want to think about switching shoulders. There are also some who hope there is some kind of dominance thing going on because it explains why they miss! But if these people were left-eye dominant, they would’ve shot four or five feet to the left. In reality, there is no issue, but they’ve been letting their focus come back to the barrel. When they do that, they’ll see the whole left side of the gun -- and a well-meaning friend or inexperienced instructor will tell them they’re left-eye dominant. They’ll put tape on their glasses and get marginally better on some specific targets, but it’ll keep them from ever being as good as they ultimately could be. That’s not a dominance problem -- it’s a focus problem.

However, there are some who are cross-eye dominant. If they look hard at a high stalling teal at 30 yards, shoot at it, and keep missing several feet to the left, then it’s obvious to both of us that their left eye’s driving the gun. Eye dominance doesn’t cause us to miss stuff by a few inches – being cross-eye dominant causes you to miss stuff by yards.

If you’re missing by yards, hands down the best choice is switch shoulders. Next best is the patch, and the least favorable is trying to wink. Most people don’t want to switch shoulders, but I’ve successfully switched people that are new to the game as well as those in their 60s. The best thing to do is to buy a Red Rider BB gun, because what you’re fighting is the awkward feel of handling the gun on the other side of your body. The easiest way to get over that is to shoot a lot, and the cheapest way to do that is with a Red Rider BB gun in your yard. If I can get someone to shoot their BB gun every day for 30 days, the next time they go to the sporting clays course they find it a whole lot easier to shoot left handed – and after that it’s a case of practice and more practice.

In my opinion, using a patch is a severe limitation. It cuts down on your peripheral vision and your depth perception, which really hinders your subconscious mind’s ability to sort out speed, angle and distance – and figure out when to pull the trigger. Trap shooters can get away with it a little bit, because they basically shoot right at targets with very little lead. 
 Sporting clay shooters have to get the barrel way out in front of stuff a lot of times, and it just doesn’t work very well. Another disadvantage of the patch is that anytime the barrel has to be over the top of the bird – like a rising teal or a driven target coming over your head or a rising trap shot – you can’t see the bird anymore. You can’t look through the gun with one eye; you need both eyes open. Right away, there are specific target presentations that become an issue. I always tell people who insist on closing one eye or wearing a patch, you better get damned good at dropping teal – because you’re not going to hit anything on the way up.

Best,

Will Fennell