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Old October 18, 2005, 04:11 PM   #1
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Both eyes dominate?

I just started shooting seriously again, I grew around guns so I am
sort of a new in some aspects. Anyway, I was always right eye dominate when I was younger, but since then my eyesight has gotten worse. My eyesight isn't really bad its just that I have astigmatism in my right eye. For those of you lucky people with perfect vison, astigmatism makes things blurry. I have good vision in my left eye and always have, I've done the finger test and the triangle test and it is hard to tell a difference. So I shot my glock 19 with both eyes at the range last weekend and did pretty well at 15 yds with both(still trying to get real good). By both I mean first with the right then with the left.

I'm thinking that maybe over the years my left eye has become dominate because it is better than the right.

Is this possible or am I crazy?

thanks in advance
randy
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Old October 18, 2005, 04:16 PM   #2
FP2000H
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My left eye has natural, significantly weaker vision than my right, although I am nearsighted overall, and I wear glasses to correct this. When I go shooting, with glasses on of course, I have to contend with left eye dominance. Obviously, with my glasses off, the right eye is going to take over but I wouldn't be able to properly make out the target in that case. As a right-hander, I practice on shifting my focus to the right eye when I aim.
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Old October 18, 2005, 04:19 PM   #3
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"Is this possible or am I crazy?"

Things change. I personally have become less left-handed and more ambidextrous as I've aged. Ok, so I still write left-handed, same with eating. But I've gone from a pure lefthanded shooter and fisherman to a much more ambi one. For that matter, I've now found that I shoot handguns better right handed than I do left handed. I suppose that if my "handedness" has changed over the years, your "eyedness" could change as well.
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Old October 18, 2005, 09:21 PM   #4
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I have a similar problem but not to the same level you do. My right eye is still dominant, but the left wants to take over for distance vision. If I'm shooting for speed, I can go both eyes open, but if I'm going for precision, I have to close my left eye or I start having double vision issues as my eyes fight for dominance.
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Old October 19, 2005, 09:53 AM   #5
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Thanks for the info guys.
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Old October 19, 2005, 11:18 AM   #6
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I gather that you don't want to wear your glasses. Most folks have some astigmatism. Astigmatism is as easy to correct as near sightedness. Extreme astigmatism, if not corrected when young, can result in reduced best corrected vision, but we are talking high astigmatism. Except in extreme cases, dominancy (a brain function) is established early in life. It isn't necessarily related to the best seeing eye, or handedness. You know that it is important to get this right if you are going to shoot with both eyes open. True co-dominance is a tough one. That's where I'm at and it really complicates things, especially with the shotgun.
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Old October 19, 2005, 01:45 PM   #7
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glasses

I do wear wear glasses. My vision is only correctable to 20/30 in my right eye. However, when I was in high school I didn't wear my glasses ever because my vision in my left eye is good. This is were my basis for thinking that my left eye may have become more dominate.

thanks
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Old October 19, 2005, 03:55 PM   #8
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Astigmatism is correctable. The fact that your right eye vision is best corrected 20/30 means that you either have some sort of health issue with the eye, such as a mild cataract, or you have a long standing (usually from birth) condition that disallows good vision. Very high astigmatism that went uncorrected as a youth would qualify. The problem is that you believe your vision to be good as a youth, but many people believe this because from day one the brain has turned off the high prescription eye in favor of the good eye. If this is the case, your dominance has always been left eye.
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Old October 19, 2005, 09:08 PM   #9
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Gary H,

When I was young I was clearly right eye dominant and my vision in my right eye was perfect. As I got closer to puberty, my right eye got progressively more near-sighted while my left eye remained nearly perfect. I didn't immediately get vision correction and as a result, my left eye tried to become dominant. As time went on, my left eye became somewhat nearsighted as well--to the point that I finally had to get vision correction.

After getting my vision corrected, my left eye still has better vision than my right--20:15 corrected while my right eye is only normal (20:20) corrected.

Therefore, I still have some mixed dominance issues even with my right eye corrected to normal vision.

And I do not have amblyopia, both of my eyes are functioning all the time. It's just that my dominance is mixed as a result of my better seeing eye being my non-dominant eye.
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