EYE DOMINANCE - WHEN YOUR EYES DECEIVE

When she was 17 years old Collyn Whitley Loper was the youngest member of the US shooting team that competed at the Olympic Games in Athens in 2004. She had already won a gold medal in trapshooting in the Pan American Games the year before and she would eventually finish just off the podium in 4th on the biggest sporting stage of all. Her shooting glasses are black over her right eye which leads people to ask her if she has an eye dominance problem. “Yeah” she replies “a big one”. She is completely blind in her right eye and has been since birth because of a rare, hereditary cancer. Kimberley Rhode, one of the most successful Olympic shooters of all time, and her room-mate that year, pointed out that her achievement was made even more remarkable because she is right-handed and had to learn to shoot off her left shoulder. Anyone who tells you that to reach the top level of the sport of shooting you must have better than average eyesight should google Loper. She is living proof that determination is more important. Other shots have competed successfully with the use of only one eye: Alan Warren, Dave Carrie and Suzy Balogh to name a few.

ADDRESSING ISSUES

Eye dominance is both key to successful shooting and at the same time incredibly personal to you. The received wisdom available on the internet may not apply to you and the only way to be sure is to engage the services of a competent coach who understands that on this subject there are few catch-all answers. Worse still eye dominance can change for anyone at any time. Put simply we have two forward-facing eyes that give us binocular vision, but for many people (not all) the view from one of those eyes, the master eye, is favoured by the brain. As the eye above the rib acts as your rear sight on a shotgun if it is being undermined by the other eye you have an issue that needs addressing.

Binocular vision gives us more of the information that we need for a successful shot. In particular, it gives us depth perception and is how we assess range. Shooting with both eyes open is therefore desirable, but it is a trade-off. If you have dominance issues then both eyes open may not be the best solution for you.

STRUGGLING WITH DRIVEN

If you are lucky like me then your right-handedness is complimented by a right master eye and yet still I have issues with eye dominance in certain situations. After a tiny shard of plastic had to be removed from my left cornea I had an eye test and was surprised to discover that my right master eye is short-sighted and I have a clearer image in my left eye. In my thirties, I began to struggle with straight driven birds with an over and under. It took me some time to work out that when the gun got to 45 degrees and I overtook the bird for the shot, my brain decided that because I had lost sight of the bird with the right eye the image of the left eye was a better bet and it took over. My rear sight altered at the crucial moment and I started missing straight driven birds regularly to the left side because of it.

SURPRISING SOLUTION

To cure this frustration I tried several things. Firstly I tried taking birds side on, almost shooting them as crossers but came completely unstuck with pheasants that curled the wrong way for whichever side I had decided to turn. After abandoning that idea I settled on squinting my left eye as my swing passed 45 degrees but I didn’t always remember to do it in the heat of the moment. As a fan of vintage guns, I decided to stop shooting driven game with my over and under and go back to my side by sides. It turned out that for me the large muscle group at the base of my left thumb does a very good job at blocking my left eye at the crucial point in the swing and I got back on form. When I tried to apply the same theory to an over and under and raise my thumb to the left side of the top barrel it didn’t have the same effect. I have to remember to squint.

OLD REMEDIES

Solutions to eye dominance problems are nothing new. The order books at James Purdey & Sons show an interesting surge in orders for crossover stocks around the 1920s as officers returning to their country seats from the First World War were rehabilitated into society. Crossover stocks are stocks with the wood bent so far over that the hand of the stock is swept past your face for your eye on the opposite side to look down the rib. Some even had their lockplates bent to continue this curve in a masterpiece of bespoke gun making. Many soldiers suffered from damage to an eye either from gas or shrapnel but wished to carry on their social lives as before in the field. Crossover stocks are rarely prescribed today as a solution by coaches. It is far more common to either try to occlude the offending eye or to learn to shoot off the other shoulder as Loper did so successfully.

NEW TOOLS

These days there is a plethora of stick-on solutions to both glasses and guns that promise results but some may be more effective than others. If you are considering any of these it is important to work with a coach who understands your particular issues with eye dominance. If the issues are unclear and your shooting level is below where you want it to be then it is worth investing in a complete eye examination from a specialist such as sports vision consultant Ed Lyons. As Ed explains to diagnose what is going on with your eye dominance a full examination and history is necessary.

"As our visual system is muscular, it is worth remembering that our eye dominance can become affected by stress, tiredness, dehydration, glucose levels, hormone levels and even reactions to some medications. The most frustrating issue is when the eye dominance fluctuates - we lose our visual consistency.”

Looking at the options available to you the most simple is to block access to your less dominant eye. Everybody is required to wear shooting glasses on a clayground these days for safety, and often it is recommended to put a small square of Scotch tape in front of the offending pupil. The theory is that you retain your peripheral vision at the same time as allowing the correct eye to keep the gun moving correctly in relation to the bird. This may work well for trap shooting where all birds are heading broadly in a similar direction, but for game shooting or sporting and different angles, it may not work. If your glasses slip further down your nose then the exercise may be at best unreliable. The same issues can be applied to the blob of lip salve on your glasses in what you hope is the correct spot. There is also a version called “Red Eye” with a magnet on small plastic discs so that you can adjust and alter without leaving residue all over potentially very expensive glasses. An improvement but still not getting around the problems above.

The most common of the gun remedies is the 'EasyHit' bead. It is an extra-long fibre optic filament that sticks on behind your bead. The idea is that the brighter the bead the more your dominant eye will be engaged by your brain to take information from that side.

A refinement of this is the 'Eye D-Rail'. Recently launched by Ben Husthwaite, one of the most successful clay shooting coaches in the country, the principle is similar to 'EasyHit' but unlike its predecessor which may still be visible to some extent by the offending eye, the Eye D-Rail has a long slender baffle running down one side (the left side for those looking to shoot right shoulder). This aims to prevent the other eye from having a chance to see any colour from the bead at all and therefore ensure the brain only takes data from about the relative position of the gun from one side.

ACCURATE DIAGNOSIS

Other remedies do exist and there are always those who proclaim each to be a miracle cure, but with all potential solutions to this most important of issues for good shooting, it is always best to seek help from a good coach. Good coaches understand their limitations too and if they feel the issues are deeper than their level of understanding, eye vision specialists are the way forward. If you want to shoot to the very best of your ability specialists are money well spent. Be very wary of self-diagnosis from the internet. This is a hugely complex topic that varies from person to person and is relative to age, sex, medication, diet, underlying health conditions and much else. For an effective prescription, you first have to get an accurate diagnosis.