Shooting with both eyes open

ROY-alty33

ROY-alty33

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Hey all,
Looking for a little free advice.
Being a life long rifle shooter, and only introduced to the wonderful world of handguns a couple of years ago, I have a real hard time aiming with both eyes open. I can see the tactical advantage of using two eyes vs. one, and want to learn how to do it.
I have tried focusing on the front sight only, focusing more on the target and letting the sights blur out, but always seem to double up the front sight. Any tips or tricks I could employ.
Also it may be related or not but I shoot a pistol better one handed than I do with two, , also I wing shoot one eyed as well.

Thanks
 
If your comfortable shooting a handgun using one eye open, then stick to that. Low power scopes, red dots, shotguns & ghost rings sights I shoot with both eyes open, but I shoot pistols better closing one eyes. It's just a matter of personal choice and of course our aging eyes.
 
Align the sights to your dominant eye. Front sight should be clear and sharply in focus, target will be slightly blurry.
It will take lots of dry firing, and lots of range time to master (obviously ymmv), but you are generally re-training your eyes to take up a sight picture.
The following has worked for me:
If you are having a hard time picking up the proper sight picture, you can try closing your weak eye, pick up the sight picture, and then slowly open the weak eye. Squinting with the weak eye may help also, at first or for longer shots, with the intent to have them completely open all of the time.
 
Focus only on the front sight. Shifting your focus back and forth will not help you much and will just end up giving you a headache. Dry fire practice helps, but don't get too stressed out about trying to shoot with both eyes open. Both eyes open is generally better, but if squinting a bit with your non-dominant eye gets the rounds on target that's good enough.
 
Also, it depends on what type of shooting you are doing...

I speak from the perspective as one trained to shoot to current "law enforcement" standards, with about 15 years of total handgun trigger time.... By no means do I consdier myself an expert, but I have put several thousand rounds out of handgun tubes. Please feel free to take my words with as large a grain of salt as you feel you need!

:)

Anyway, I digress - THREE TYPES OF SHOOTING:

DELIBERATE: Just like with an iron-sighted long gun. Dominant eye only, focus locked on the foresight, call it "marksman" sighting technique, if you will... Just like with a rifle, you are zoned in on the sight, and doing your best to be totally immobile as the trigger is squeezed. Generally for distance shooting (arbitrarily, I would suggest 15m and more). As another poster mentioned above... DO NOT keep switching your focus back and forth from the foresight to the target, in order to see how you are doing... Fire your string, THEN have a look at the target. You will fatigue your eye if you keep changing your point of focus, and will end up not being able to get focussed on the front sight.

"FLASH" Sighting: For intermediate ranges (say, 7-15m [my distance ideas - feel free to make your own parameters up]). You are looking at the target ("the threat"), and bring the pistol up into your field of vision, taking the time to just glance and locate the sights towards the target, before squeexing trigger. Both eyes open, or dominant only - whatever works best. This is supposed to be fast; not rifle-accurate, but at least "pointed" in the right direction.

INSTINCTIVE: Imagine throwing darts at a dartboard.... Do darts have sights? Same deal here... Clear leather and "throw" projectile towards close-in target (like, 5m and less)... If your stance, grip, and trigger pull are all practiced, you will naturally align the pistol towards the target, just like with practice throwing things, you can throw a dart pretty accurately at a dratboard.

Hopefully, this paradigm of mine will help you out a little... Many here have far more experience than I, and that's the cool thing about this forum... We ALL get to learn something new!

Practice, practice, practice!

;)

Neal
 
Try putting a small piece of tape over your weak eye and practice acquiring the front sight with your dominant eye. Once you've got an idea of how to look at the front sight with both eyes open, remove the tape.

When I'm bored, I'll practice the same "sight picture" using my extended thumb. You can do it in traffic at red lights, sitting at your desk and all kinds of fun places where a gun would be inappropriate. :)
 
hungrybeagle said:
When I'm bored, I'll practice the same "sight picture" using my extended thumb. You can do it in traffic at red lights, sitting at your desk and all kinds of fun places where a gun would be inappropriate. :)
Click to expand...

Those all sound like perfectly appropriate places for a gun.:D
 
Shooting with eyes wide open

Other than a piece of masking tape you could try an occluder ( I have used white plastic with great success) to enable me to shoot with both eyes open. Squinting will result in a sympathetic reaction of the aiming eye with all the attendant disadvantages that this entails. The brain will need a period of accommodation before the double images will not be noticed any longer.
Good Luck.
 
Sure beats both eyes closed :p

Sight picture is very important to accurate shooting, after all, if you can't see it clearly, aiming will be very difficult, if not impossible. Additionally, if you aren't seeing your target in the same way each time, you'll have greater difficulty hitting the same spot with each successive shot. Therefore, the two most important aspects of sight picture are clarity and consistency. The picture you see, whether through a scope or with iron sights, should be clear and sharp. Concentrate on a specific point, don't just aim "at the target" select a very small location on the target and aim at that spot. When using a scope, your sight picture should be round and without dark "half moon" areas. For iron sights, your target and sighting post should be aligned and in focus. Sometimes looking away briefly and then looking back before taking final aim will help to refocus things. Being consistent about your sight picture is equally important. Whether you decide to shoot with one eye closed, or both eyes open, be consistent about it, don't change midstream. Did I mention consistency is the key? :D
 
ROY-alty33 said:
Hey all,
Looking for a little free advice.
Being a life long rifle shooter, and only introduced to the wonderful world of handguns a couple of years ago, I have a real hard time aiming with both eyes open. I can see the tactical advantage of using two eyes vs. one, and want to learn how to do it.
I have tried focusing on the front sight only, focusing more on the target and letting the sights blur out, but always seem to double up the front sight. Any tips or tricks I could employ.
Also it may be related or not but I shoot a pistol better one handed than I do with two, , also I wing shoot one eyed as well.

Thanks
Click to expand...

The answer to this one is simple, put a piece of tape over the weak-eye lens of your eye protection. This is the trick usually used to get people over this problem. Two ways of doing it, if you only shoot precision pistol, then you can actually black out the lens completely, the advantage of having both eyes open is to prevent you from squinting with your aiming eye in precision.

If you're shooting some sort of action pistol sport (i.e. with movement of the gun) you do need to be able to see where you are going and be able to follow the movement of the gun, so the usual trick is to use some of the translucent Scotch tape over the centre of the lens of your eye protection. This "fogs" up your vision but doesn't obscure it completely. Once you've got your eyes trained you can get rid of the tape.

There are various specialised shooting specs made that have flaps and so on for blocking out vision in one eye.
 
DOn't use any tape. Just go out and get use to keeping both eyes open. Running through a stage you do not want to have any eye closed.
 
Both eyes open

Levi Garrett said:
Sure beats both eyes closed :p

Sight picture is very important to accurate shooting, after all, if you can't see it clearly, aiming will be very difficult, if not impossible. Additionally, if you aren't seeing your target in the same way each time, you'll have greater difficulty hitting the same spot with each successive shot. Therefore, the two most important aspects of sight picture are clarity and consistency. The picture you see, whether through a scope or with iron sights, should be clear and sharp. Concentrate on a specific point, don't just aim "at the target" select a very small location on the target and aim at that spot. When using a scope, your sight picture should be round and without dark "half moon" areas. For iron sights, your target and sighting post should be aligned and in focus. Sometimes looking away briefly and then looking back before taking final aim will help to refocus things. Being consistent about your sight picture is equally important. Whether you decide to shoot with one eye closed, or both eyes open, be consistent about it, don't change midstream. Did I mention consistency is the key? :D
Click to expand...

"...select a very small location on the target and aim at that spot."
I don't know what kind of handgun shooting is being discussed here, but when it comes to precision pistol shooting, I totally disagree with this piece of, no doubt, well-intentioned advice.
Actually, it's the other way around, within limits, of course. If you try to aim at too small an aiming area your groups will INCREASE in size, while selecting a larger and more comfortable aiming area your groups will DECREASE in size.
This occurs b/c when selecting a too small an AA, you will squeeze
the trigger consciously, and subconsciously in the other scenario.
 
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