Cross-dominant shooting woes

[Tenguns]

In my 40's now, I've been shooting long guns since I was 12 and started handgun shooting just a few years ago. In all that time I did not realize that hand/eye cross-dominance was even a thing!

Well, as I've been really trying to improve my handgun technique, only now do I understand that I am right-handed and strongly left-eye dominant. I had always just viewed it as the vision in my left eye was a little better than the vision in my right eye (I don't require glasses for everyday life).

In researching how to adapt to this, I am reading stuff that seems crazy to me. For example, I just read an article online that said for long guns, the only "satisfactory" way to shoot as a right-handed, left-eye dominant shooter is to learn to shoot from your left shoulder. Ummm...WHAT??? All my life I've shot from my right shoulder, closed my dominant left eye and sighted with my right. Yes, I always knew that my left eyesight was a little "better", but so what? I can still see my target and have I have confidence and some pride in my accuracy. Everyone I shoot with considers me to be a pretty darned good shot with a rifle, and I've never felt like I had a problem.

So on to handguns. I cannot shoot with both eyes open in any case, one of them has to be closed. So again, in working out of Weaver stance, I've been closing my left eye. However, this is not working as well for me as my rifle approach. In attempting to improve my skills, I took the advice to heart that I need to really focus more on my front sight. Well, this is a big struggle for me with my non-dominant right eye. When I focus on the front sight with my right eye, my "depth of field" (I think is the right term) is poor. In other words, if I'm really focusing down hard on the front sight, my acquisition of the downrange target is...not at all good. It is indeed much better when experimenting with closing my right.

So, I feel like I need to shoot with my left eye, unlike with my rifles. This is in itself awkward, as closing my right eye is not natural to me since I'm so used to closing my left. However, I believe I can get used to it. But now what??? Weaver stance leaves my head cocked quite a bit which seems like poor form, but maybe not that big a deal? I just don't want to reinforce bad habits or poor form. The logical thing seems like maybe I should begin training isosceles stance, which would require me to crank my head less in order to look down the sights with my dominant eye while shooting right handed.

Any advice from experienced shooters who have overcome this issue? I am feeling bummed out.

[L2R]

Sometimes it is just best to embrace what ability you have and make the best of it. In time, you may find it has advantages.

When I made the commitment to practice shooting right handed, it didn't take all that much practice to get comfortable with it. A year later, it felt natural.

What next:
you shoot better aligning right hand and right eye
you are a better ambidextrious, one handed shooter
Holding a pistol with your off hand leaves you with a dominant hand free
A really good thing if you need to defend yourself or hold on to a loved one
Your IDPA ranking goes up when they make us shoot off handed


So,you too can adapt.

As for stance and eyes open, I will leave it to others but again, I think you find good habits and form and follow it until it becomes yours.

[Sharkbite]

After decades of teaching thousands of students I've run across plenty of students in your shoes. Don't despair....

The solution is actually fairly easy

Instead of canting your head to the side (ear to shoulder), turn your head (chin to shoulder) to bring your dominate eye in line with the sights. This will preserve your balance and allow ease of movement

With a strongly dominate eye, you should not have to do more then slightly squint your non-dominant eye to get a perfect sight picture

[Branko]

Well, I'd give isoceles stance a try and see how it works out for you. It's just easier on cross dominant shooters then weaver.

[Greybeard]

+1 to what sharkbite said.

[Greybeard]

+1 to what sharkbite and branko said.

[Lee6113]

I'm left handed and right eyed cross dominant. I never shot rifles a whole lot so my experience is solely with pistols. I shot isosceles instead of weaver, and when I was in my late teens I decided to just shoot right handed. I found I shot better anyway and it wasn't too difficult. When I was a kid my guitar teacher didn't know I was left handed so I learned to play right handed without really realizing/thinking about it.

I can shoot with either hand now (though I won't claim to be all that good yet... Haha).

Good luck!

[WI Birdhunter]

Put your chin on your right bicep with both eyes open and see how the sights look. I'm left eye dominant, right hand shooter, and this works for me.

[rburch]

Isosceles is probably your best option, from that stance it's not an issue at all to line the sights up with whichever eye you need.

I'm not cross dominate, but I shoot like I am as practice on occasion.

Since I've had several students who are, I've found it useful to have done it a bit when it comes to teaching the techniques.

I do recommend new shooters shoot long guns based off their dominant eye, but people who have been shooting for years I may leave alone if they have adapted a technique that is working.

If you close your eye, rifles are workable from your weak eye, but shotguns I've found to be more eye specific.

To get good at skeet, trap, etc. You really need to have both eyes open, and if your dominant eye is offset from your barrel it can easily cause problems.

[hartcreek]

sharkbite did a good start but while doing what he suggested you can also learn to shoot with either hand. With some practice you will learn to use the left eye when shooting left handed and right eye for shooting right handed. In the beginning you may have to close one eye to focus on the site but with time you will just be able to concentrate and leave both eyes open.

[TXAZ]

I'm the opposite, left hand / right eye. With practice, it gets easier and easier.

[bamaranger]

My Dad was cross dominant, right hand/left eye. My son, aka bamaboy, is the same. The thing skipped me. Dad never had it diagnosed 'till I came home from some training and recognized it in him, and he was well into his 50's at that point.

Dad shot off his right shoulder, and it gave him fits. HIs handgun shooting suffered too. He missed a lot of game, and when he switched over to scopes on rifles, it got worse. My observation is that you can beat it deliberately, as in at the range, etc, and one can wear a patch. But put the pressure of shooting at game suddenly, , competition at speed,, a threat.........and the eyes want to take over, and shooting suffers. Dad missed more game than a lot of guys get to shoot at, and I suspect a lot of it was his cross dominance.

I spotted it in bamaboy right off, and started him off his left shoulder with a long gun. As that was all he knew, he shoots off that side very well. It makes running a bolt a bit of a bother (no left handed rifles at the bamahouse), but off of a support, he can be very fast as he does not need to come off of his shooting grip with his left, and runs the bolt with his right hand. The boy prefers a semi, obviously, but the right side ejection on most semi's can be a distraction. Pump and lever the same. I might add the kids hand/eye coordination is off the chart, with a 3rd Degree Black Belt in Tang Soo Do.

With a handgun, the boy shoots right handed, holster on the right, and simply brings the gun into line of sight a bit further to the left, aligned with his master eye on the left side. The pistol may have a very slight cant to it depending on the circumstances (cover, obstruction, etc) but not overly exaggerated at all.

[9x45]

You can learn to live with cross eye dominance, there are a number of top competition shooters who do. Keeping both eyes open, all the time, including strong and weak handed, tip your head slightly to get the dominant eye on the front sight, and roll the gun slightly to put the front sight in front of your dominant eye, and use the isosceles stance.

The other solution is to trick the dominant eye. Put Scotch tape over the dominant eye, keep your head straight and gun straight, both eyes open. What happens is the dominant eye believes it is focused on the front sight, but its really the weak eye that is focused. It takes some time, but eventually it will work. Sometimes the shooter has to blink to bring it back.

[Dusty Rivers]

I'm not sure you are supposed to focus on the front sight. I believe you are supposed to focus on the target through the sights. Being cross dominant just causes me( when using a 2 handed grip) to center the gun more on the center of my chest. This actually gives me a more balanced natural stance ( just my humble opinion). Target in focus, sights blurred. Impossible to focus on both at the same time. Or do I have it backwards as usual?

Try closing both eyes and using the Force. That works good to.

[Tucker 1371]

I am exactly the same as the OP, right handed but left eye dominant. When I was 7 years old my grandpaw scratched his head when I shouldered my first rifle left handed. But I've always shot pistols right handed.

I strongly recommend to the OP to consider shooting rifles left handed, I am able to shoot either or now but I shoot much better left handed. As for pistols Sharkbite gave the same advice an instructor gave me and it has improved my handgun shooting significantly.

[Nick_C_S]

I'm left-eyed, and right-handed. Well, I'm actually left-handed; with a strong ambidextrous tendency - to the point where I shoot handguns right-handed.

Shooting handguns for me has never been a problem - either Weaver or Isosceles - I do both. I suppose my head is a bit canted but I shoot with both eyes open. I do start to squint a little near the end of my shooting session; and it's nature's way of telling me I'm starting to get tired.

I do a lot of target shooting and also compete in action shooting. I'm a pretty decent shot.

Rifle shooting is where I have my problem. Being left-eyed, I have to shoot rifles left-handed. There's no way I can sight with my right eye. BTW, my vision is pretty good, except for presbyopia (age related far sightedness). My right eye's vision is actually slightly sharper - according to my ophthalmologist.

But I have very little rifle shooting experience. Other than trying a few of my friend's rifles over the years, I just bought my first rifle - a Marlin 1894 44 Magnum. I have a whole 45 rounds through it during one shooting session. And that's the most I've ever fired a rifle at one time.

[T. O'Heir]

Right-handed, left-eye dominant shooter is how it's done. Isn't an issue. No bending or turning your head anywhere.
The whole thing goes away when you shoot with both eyes open if shooting with 2 hands. For one handed bullseye shooting, you move the hind leg to bring the sights over.

[9x45]

Dusty, always front sight focus. The target and rear sight can be fuzzy, but the front sight must be razor sharp. Hold your gun like this.

[sliponby]

One of the best shooters on YouTube, Hickok45, is cross eye dominant. Watch him shoot sometime. I communicated with him back in 2008 on this subject as I am also right handed-left eye dominant. Back then he only had about 40,000 subscribers. Now he's closing on 2 million.

[DPI7800]

. Dusty, always front sight focus. The target and rear sight can be fuzzy, but the front sight must be razor sharp. Hold your gun like this.

May want to ease up on the always. One day I was out shooting with this new chump shooter Rob Leatham, some of you may heard of this up and comer. Anyway we were having a conversation about how to look at sights and how much focus is required on the front sight versus the target. So after several minutes of conversation he tells me to load up and puts me on a timer. He has me on first couple reps draw and fire on on an 10" steel plate at 12 yards with total front sight focus. Then draw and fire one with total target focus. Guess what time was faster? The target focus was. Now Rob being Rob the lesson not end there. He had me do this drill as I incrementally moved all the way back to 20yards and the target focus was always the fastest.

Now understand, he would not under any circumstance be an advocate of this technique for adverage or below adverage shooters. It is strickly an advanced technique for those that have a higher skill level and understanding of the application of the fundamentals of marksmanship.

But then again this information is coming from a guy that "only" shoots a 100,000 plus rounds of handgun ammunition a year. What can he know.

My biggest point is let's not say always or never.

[iraiam]

I have the same cross dominant symptom as the OP, over the years I have managed to train over it with handguns, I can shoot handguns with any hand eye combination. (with both eyes open)

With rifle it's a little different, I can shoot a light recoil rifle from either shoulder, on my left side I can shoulder the rifle and look down the sights/optics and it comes right in.

When I shoulder a rifle on the right side, I can see iron sights fine but optics are an issue, I simply cant see through the optics until I close my left eye, I have been trying to train this out for a very long time, I have never been able to get this part.

[jmr40]

With handguns it isn't that hard to adapt. With long guns the best thing to do is to learn to shoot from the left side. My brother has the same problem. When he finally decided to retrain himself to shoot left handed he became a much better shot. There was a learning curve, at first he shot very poorly from the left side. But after a little work he quickly became much better than he had been when trying to shoot right handed with a left dominant eye.

[Tenguns]

Thanks everyone for the suggestions, I'm definitely feeling better about the handgun situation. Since I first posted, I've had the chance to go to the range a couple times and experiment. It actually feels pretty good to shoot with my left eye and my right hand now that I realize it's not improper technique for someone in my circumstance. I like how I have to adjust my head very little in isosceles stance to shoot with my left eye, however I am still more accurate out of Weaver, which is probably just a muscle memory thing. I'm going to keep experimenting with both and I'm very comfortable now that I will gravitate to a stance that's natural for me and yields good results.

But guys...the rifle thing. I have 35 years of muscle memory burned in to me, and I don't know how switching hands at this point can be realistic. Hundreds of hours as a boy shooting air rifles and .22 from my right shoulder and using only my right eye. As soon as I begin to raise up a rifle, I naturally transition from two-eye mode to one-eye mode. Despite being left eye-dominant, I can easily and naturally close my left eye, even more so than my right after doing it that way all my life. Once the rifle is up, you can call me Captain Jack, because I may as well be wearing a left eye patch. I own six rifles, and some will find it unusual that two of them are kept in iron sights, and the others all have relatively low magnification fixed scopes. I think the reason that is my STRONG set-up preference is that because once the rifle is up, I cannot so easily switch between two eyes for field of view and one eye for shooting. What I see out of my one eye for the most part is the field of view I'm going to get, so I like to have a lot of information in my sight picture. As weird as this may seem, this is what I have adapted to pretty successfully, and at 47, learning to shoot left handed seems as likely to me as learning to write left handed. What is true however is that shotguns are not in the cards. I've never been comfortable with them so no trap or skeet, but I'm very ok with that!

[iraiam]

It's not as much of a handicap as you think, the best I can do is shoulder a scoped rifle on my right side and blink my left eye, this brings the optics in on my right eye and then I can maintain it with both eyes open.

I have never been able to overcome this with optics, I've tried every trick in the book including blocking my left eye for extended periods of time (months), my left eye dominance has quickly returned every single time. I finally just decided it's the way it is and deal with it.

[TunnelRat]

I'm in the same boat, except you actually have a leg up on me. My left eye is so dominant that I can't for the life of me close it without closing the right eye. I can close my right eye and keep my left open, but my body seems inclined to give up on vision all together if it doesn't have that left eye. The only way I can shoot a rifle right-handed and get the sights to work is to obstruct my left eye .

So what do I do? I shoot rifles, shotguns, any long gun off my left shoulder. I'm lucky in that since I was a kid this was actually what felt natural to me (my mother claims I spent the first few years of my life using my left hand dominantly and then switched for some reason). I still shoot pistol right handed. In both cases I shoot with both eyes open. I like the added situational awareness it gives me, but frankly it's something I never had to work at. I could always just shoot with both eyes open. When it comes to the pistol I find I naturally cant the pistol ever so slightly to make it match up better with my left eye. I still angle my head as well, but again something in my body is doing work behind the scenes. Because of this cross eye dominance I shoot pistol primarily in isosceles.

So I guess my point is it's a problem that can be overcome in any number of ways. How seems to be up to you. I was lucky enough that my natural instincts seem to compensate for my problem so there was no learning on my end. I can see where you're coming from that you have years of developed muscle memory to overcome. You'll have to determine for yourself if it's worth working against that memory.

I did like this article I found a bit ago:
https://www.usconcealedcarry.com/fin...ooting-stance/