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I am a relatively new shooter. 3 months in. I have always shot with both eyes open. But last night I tried closing one eye for the first time. It never occurred to me before, but someone else told me they always close non dom eye. My groups came in quite a bit. Now I don't want to do this, but is there a two eyed solution? Different sight on gun? Eye exercises? What an I missing? (Besides the bullseye) Shadow 2, has a 1mm front fiber optic. An experienced shooter friend picked it up and said...nope. He could not "see" the front sight. I realize this is practice and his preference....but I am struggling. Thanks for any advise.
Jason
 
Put a piece of scotch tape on the lens of your shooting glasses blurring your straight ahead vision of your non dominant eye.

I shoot both eyes open inside 15 yards, beyond that I close an eye for increased accuracy
 
I'm a new shooter as well, so this suggestion may be bad advice but I'm trying to train myself to keep both eyes open as well. Sometimes my dominant eye has a hard time locking in on the front sight so I'll close my left eye for just a moment, then open it again. Gives me a good focus with my dominant eye.

I wear prescription glasses so I don't like putting anything on the lens.
 
Caboose said:
I shoot both eyes open inside 15 yards, beyond that I close an eye for increased accuracy
Click to expand...

This is what I do also. Using the one dominant eye will always increase accuracy in slow fire. But you need both eyes open in run and gun competitions for closer shots. It’s a balance of rapid target acquisition and A zone hits. You’re not trying to print 1” shots.

For distance shots, I don’t totally close one eye, just kind of half close the non-dominant one so it becomes blurry.
 
pbruce706 said:
I wear prescription glasses so I don't like putting anything on the lens.
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...you may want to get yourself some proper safety glasses. I've seen 20-25yd ricochets off steel hit a guy in the neck, drawing blood.

I close my non-dominant eye, pretty much no matter the distance. When I move, it opens up again. I may open it for stationary transitions too - not sure. lol!
 
For eye protection while wearing glasses you might wanna try this: https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B071RSM598/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 Brass has a chance to fly into that gap between your glasses and your eyes. I have seen that happened and it was not pretty. I mainly shoot with weaver stance and in that case I can open both eyes. If I do isosceles stance I found I have a hard time opening both eyes for further targets. I am kinda weird that way ;)
 
I just listened to a pod cast where competitive shooter Eric Grauffel talks about 1 eye open vs 2 eyes open shooting. Essentially he said the 1 eye approach is always going to yield better accuracy no matter how much 2 eye open training you do. There's a reason bullseye shooters only use 1 eye. He goes on to say he uses 1 eye open shooting for long distance/high risk shots and 2 eyes open for close/low risk shots. There's a time vs accuracy strategy when shooting IPSC or USPSA. If you're just plinking do whatever feels comfortable for you.
 
As mentioned above, 2 eyes open is better, all you have to do focus the sight on the aiming eye, and the image on 2nd eye will blurry out.
This technique will not tired you behind the scope, because you have one eye closed.
If you have game running around you can refocus on 2nd eye image and see where is about, without loosing the aiming.
Quick and easy.
One eye closed technique ill get you tired faster behind the scope.
 
Caboose said:
Put a piece of scotch tape on the lens of your shooting glasses blurring your straight ahead vision of your non dominant eye.

I shoot both eyes open inside 15 yards, beyond that I close an eye for increased accuracy
Click to expand...

I tried smearing the left lenses with chapstick. It worked, but gave me s headache pretty quick. I will try it again....maybe I'll get used to it.
 
I cannot shoot a pistol with both eyes open, no matter the distance, I always shoot dominant eye only. With a rifle/red dot, no problem shooting with both eyes open, I have no idea why, but I don't even try with a pistol lol
 
I have been shooting bullseye/target shooting for many years and I was taught years ago to shoot with both eyes open but could never get used to it so I have been taping up the lense on my non dominant eye for over 30 years and it's worked for me. another trick for a new shooter if you are using a black bullseye type target is that if you are having a hard time focusing on sights. i had this problem when i first started shooting as my eyes seemed to want to focus on the target and that gave me a blurry sight picture. so the range officer at the time told me to turn the target around backwards so I was looking at blank white piece of paper and this will force your eyes to focus on sights. It worked for me, I went back and forth for several weeks doing this and it kind of trained my eyes.
 
I was told by a former P.P.C.l.I sniper to shoot with one eye, but when I’m trap shooting I tend to have better luck with both eyes open
 
I have shot handgun for a long time since age ten, and have always used the one eye approach for target work.

Since I am right handed and left eye dominant, using both eyes open just creates a confused situation for my body to deal with. Once upon a time up until around age 40 I could shoot almost equally as well using my left hand, but even then a one eye approach was the only one that worked for proper sight picture.

I either close my left eye or use a piece of cardboard (cardboard from a 22lr brick works well) cut and bent to shape with tape to hold in place to cover the left lens of the shooting glasses. I do not like sticky residue on the lens from direct tape.

From reading, I would say that in combat situations with a handgun it is always best to use a two eyes open approach for a number of reasons with the most important being full peripheral vision in order to be aware of surroundings.

For rifle with iron sights I also close the left eye to reduce confusion with my brain processing info.

For trap/skeet I need to keep both eyes open. This is especially true for skeet where you need to have full peripheral in order to pick up the clays from the sides in order to get on target quickly. My father was the one who got me started on clays, and he told me it was only going to work with both eyes open. He coached me in the beginning as I had a lot of issues trying to scan the periphery to get on a swinging arc with the target and then have the correct sight picture when pulling the trigger. It took a LOT of practice to get there for me. It takes someone standing behind you to figure out where you are actually shooting and to discuss what you are seeing with so you can make adjustments. I had to overcome the whole dominant eye - opposing dominant hand thing. Once you imprint in your brain what a sight picture should look like for swing and lead, and then what it should look like when you pull the trigger, it will become natural regardless of what your brain would interpret otherwise.
 
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