Indians For Guns

Source: http://www.fieldandstream.com/blogs/sho ... gle+Reader
By Phil Bourjaily

This is a picture of my son John, who went from shooting trap scores of 4x25 last week to 19x25 this week. As you can see, I’ve put a piece of electrician’s tape over his off-side eye. That’s a common solution to cross-dominance, when a shooter is right handed but left-eyed or vice versa. The tape obscures the strong eye’s view of the gun enough to force the weaker eye to take over.

However, tape on the lens is only half the solution in John’s unusual case. He is center dominant, the visual equivalent of being ambidextrous. (I don’t know how common it is, but two of the 30 kids on our high school trap club are center dominant.)

John is left handed and a good shot at skeet, sporting clays and real birds when he starts with an unmounted gun. In trap, with the gun premounted, the gun blocks enough of his left eye’s vision that the right eye sometimes takes over. John is – or was – a terrible trap shot.

We tried everything, including tape over the right eye. Nothing helped. Last Tuesday we worked on left to right angles. John went 0 for 49, having gone 1 for 50 on the same target the previous week. Out of desperation I said: “Why don’t you try shooting some right-handed?” At first it didn’t work. Then I put tape over his left eye, and just like that, John started smashing targets.

The point is, eye dominance isn’t just left or right, there all kinds of gray areas in between. I don’t fully understand why this fix worked, but it did, spectacularly. I now have a son who hunts and shoots sporting clays left-handed, two-eyed, and shoots trap right handed, one eyed. Unusual problems sometimes require unusual solutions.

Regards

Very helpful. Thanks

changing shoulders is a good way of correcting cross dominance. initially very difficult and frustrating but then gives results.

shooting wih both shoulders is possible (eve with the same gun) and the late king of portugal is a prime example who was a crackshot with both sides. I dont know how or why.

John's case is indeed interesting but all he is doing is using 2 methods of correcting dominance instead of one. All he did was to try the flowchart till one gets the technique that works for you. first try closing the eye at the last moment just before pulling the trigger, then try closing the the eye before mounting then try obscuring oe eye, then try shootig with the other shoulder. Crossover stock is not routinely used nowa days perhaps because of the cost involved for a bespoke gun.

@m24

How can you measure or technically prove that he is "Centre Dominant?"

I have made some experiments to identify which dominant eye I am:

Which ever side is getting shifted more from the centre will be your dominant eye. That is, if the shift is more on left side while closing your right eye, then your left eye is dominant. Else if the shift is more on right side while closing your left eye, then your right eye is dominant.

For me it was 23inches on the left and 21inches on the right and hence I concluded myself to be left eye dominant.

How can you measure and state "Centre Dominant"?