Understanding Eye Dominance
Did you know that just like with your hands you have a dominant eye? Well, you do! While many times your dominant hand and eye are both the same side, that is certainly not always the case. In fact, it’s not uncommon to have them not mirror each other, and it seems to be even more prevalent with women for some reason…maybe it’s that whole right brain, left brain thing that determines it. Regardless this condition is called cross-dominance.
Additionally, your dominant eye can change. Historically I was always right eye dominant, however after suffering an eye injury which affected my vision in my right eye some (especially near) my eye dominance changed over to my left eye. After a few frustrating strings on the range the first time back after eye surgery I thought to check my eye dominance and sure enough it had switched on me.
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Why Knowing Your Dominant Eye Is Important
The reason it’s important to know your eye dominance is that it is highly important that it is the one looking down the barrel and providing the primary focus for shooting. You want to shoot with both eyes open, but even so, you will still have one eye that is the main source of focus, and this is where the shot will hit…. that is if you’re using your dominant eye.
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How To Identify Your Dominant Eye
The great thing is that this is very easy to check and identify which is your dominant eye.
Here is what you do.
Hold your arms straight out in front of you and form your hands together to make a triangle (as in the picture)
Then focus on an object in the distance through the triangle hole.
Slowly bring your hands back to your head (it will go to one eye) while keeping the object in focus the whole time. The eye that the triangle hole goes to is the one that is your dominant eye.
You’ll want to double check this, as sometimes there is an inclination to cheat if your cross-dominant. You can double check yourself by then covering the dominant eye and the object should not be visible or at least heavily shifted position of view.
In some rare cases some individuals are center dominant (can see it similarly with both eyes). From my experience this is very rare so I would double check and triple check if this is what you’re coming up with. None-the-less it is possible, so I wanted to mention it in case you are one of the rare few.
In some rare cases some individuals are center dominant (can see it similarly with both eyes). From my experience this is very rare so I would double check and triple check if this is what you’re coming up with. None-the-less it is possible, so I wanted to mention it in case you are one of the rare few.
