I heard about shooting with both eyes open

Sport45 : Your focus is on the pencil rather than the doorknob. Try playing with your focus until you see 2 pencils and one doorknob. One pencil will be more distinct than the other.
Right eye dominant: the left pencil will be most distinct, and aimed at the dorknob.
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The eraser being under the right doorknob tells me the same thing. Focusing on the doorknob both pencils look pretty much the same. If I stare at the doorknob long enough one pencil image or the other (seems random) will go away entirely.

For target shooting (round black bulls on paper) I close my left eye or wind up with a headache along with a bad score.

The last time I qualified for my carry permit I used both eyes and point shot well enough to pass.

If I have time to aim I'm closing my left eye. If I don't have time to aim I won't. YMMV
 
Both eyes should be open at all times, any gun, any type of sights. I cannot think of a single reason why anyone would ever want to be shooting at anything, targets, hunting, or SD while only using 1/2 of their vision.

If you cannot do it, learn how. Don't ever let a new shooter develop bad habits.
 
The eraser ...point shot well enough to pass.
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Exactly. I was beating around the bush a bit because I didn’t want to take flak about bringing up point shooting. :o
I focus on the target with both eyes open … and may be the completely wrong thing to do for most people . I teach people to focus on the front sight, but find it difficult and clumsy to do myself. When I’m shooting a pistol with defense in mind, I’m aware of the sight picture as a fuzzy image aligned with the target in focus.
Shooting "bullseye style", I focus on the sight, with the target fuzzy. . I get eyestrain when shooting "bullseye" for too long.

I don’t think all eyes and associated vision circuitry are created equal. Some would say that’s just a cop-out for not learning what I teach others. I think it’s working with what I have, vision-wise.
My eye dominance shifts depending on what I’m doing and I can consciously choose one or the other as dominant. Shifting back and forth causes an odd sensation of my surroundings gently "rocking" a little. Mostly, I’m right eye dominant and right handed. Shooting left handed, eyes naturally shift to left-dominant. (Hand preference also shifts depending on what I’m doing.)
I've also noticed that I lose the ability to focus close-up under high stress or anger. At times, I've had to wait until I calmed down before I could read normal print ... without straining really hard, that is.

Out of curiosity … When you hold the pencil in your left hand, does your eye dominance shift ?
 
I better learn how to shoot with both eyes open... I been using an eye patch because it's hard to keep one eye shut. :rolleyes:
 
What about the sight picture??? Unless I fire off a few shots and then check the target and repeat several times I really won't have any idea of where I should be aiming. I'm attempting to tap into the knowledge of my peers here to avoid simple
mistakes.
 
Use the force ,RedDog :D… sorry, I couldn’t resist, no offense intended… but imo, it is a "let it happen"sort of thing. Practice at home just aiming is also very helpful,imo.

Front sight focus :Sight picture is "as normal". Some see a double image of the target. For some of those people, the second image goes away or they learn to ignore it.

Target focus : double image is of the sight alignment, otherwise the same as above.
 
You might try ...
Support your pistol arm somehow … so you can keep it steady while moving your head( moving the head while changing the way you look at something has a tendency to happen without realizing it). Pick something to aim at, do so, then open your second eye. If the pistol is properly supported, you can play with your eyes .. focus, note image characteristics, etc … while knowing where the gun is aimed. A pistol with both iron sights and a laser might be helpful, if you have one.
 
Sometimes some good instruction is needed.

My group put on its monthly Basic Handgun class last Saturday. We had nine students, none of whom had ever fired a gun before. Three of them were cross dominant.

At the live fire part of the class, everyone was shooting 1.5 to 2 inch groups with a .22lr at seven yards. Several shot sub-2.5 inch groups with the .44 Magnum. One student shot a 1.5 inch group with the .44 Magnum double action. No one shot groups larger than about 3 inches with a variety of guns from 9mm up to the .44 Magnum. Everyone shot with both eyes open. And again not a single student had ever fired a gun before.

These results are fairly typical for our classes, except the sometimes we do have a student who isn't able to manage to shoot with both eyes open, but that's pretty rare.

We teach standard front sight focus/surprise break. But we have a lot of instructors for relatively few students -- usually a 1:2 or 1:3 instructor to student ratio. We provide a lot of "hands-on" individualized instruction.
 
I want to know how that's done. I seen things referring to 'Front Sight' among others. How do you aim? What if you have a dominant eye?
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Normally when I shoot with both eyes open, which is how I normally shoot, I see a ghost image of what I'm looking at. I disregard one of the images and focus on the other that is picked up by my dominant eye.

To figure out which eye is dominant aim at something with both eyes open. Don't do anything fancy, just do whatever feels natural. Close one eye, if the sights are still lined up then you are looking through your dominant eye. That's how I figured it out anyway.

I've noticed that it takes quite a bit of work to aim using my non dominant eye and it doesn't feel natural at all.
 
I cannot think of a single reason why anyone would ever want to be shooting at anything, targets, hunting, or SD while only using 1/2 of their vision.
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I have one: Using high magnification scopes, it's a real mind bender trying to make sense out of two images of apparent different sizes.

Try setting a your rifle scope on 10 or 12 power and keep both eyes open.... makes for a headache.

I shoot pistol, iron sighted rifles, and scout scoped rifles both eyes open. Conventional scoped rifles with large magnifications, dominant eye only.
 
Great topic. Another benefit of both eyes open, besides the increased field of view mentioned, is that there's twice the light getting to the brain. Especially critical in low light.

I've been a one-eyed shooter ever since I learned to shoot 30 years ago and I've done fairly well, but now it's time to see if this old dog can learn a new trick.

I shoot pistols and plan to go to the range and try two things with both eyes open: 'focus on the front sight', or 'focus on the target'. I'll shoot three rounds each way at different aim points (i.e. - 'focus on the front sight' for aim point 1, then 'focus on the target' for aim point 2), then check my target and assess accuracy. Then I'll repeat, again and again.

The truth lies in where the bullet strikes the target, so I'll do this range exercise before deciding how to do any extensive dry fire practice at home.

Note: as I read this thread and try pointing a pencil at an aim point, 'focus on the target' initially seems more natural and easy than does 'focus on the front sight'. But for 30 years I've been a front sight (with one eye) guy. This should be an interesting exercise.

I'll post a follow up after I hit the range.
 
IMHO :Most people seem to get quicker accuracy results with front sight focus, and a lot of conventional wisdom supports it as the superior method. I personally believe it to be more inherently accurate, less dependent on the gun being matched to you, and less work/practice to master.

I never have recommended target focus for anyone that hasn’t exhaustively tried to master front sight focus except once… and that was a case of a woman that had never shot a pistol before, couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn after 2 boxes of .38s, and I had less than an hour to get her where she wouldn’t automatically lose a confrontation with her ex. It worked good enough to group 5" @ 20’ almost immediately. Slow fire, rapid fire, didn’t really matter. A couple of days later, she could barely hit the paper that way. We returned to training front sight focus, and she could do it !!! I think most of her troubles were from stress, and the "target focus" was just a temporary stopgap measure to compensate. The ex had been picked up and locked up by the second lesson, btw.

Anyway, I hope you consider trying to learn front sight focus with both eyes open before trying target focus… If you’re seriously training, that is. Mixing it up might be fun, but I dunno how useful it’d be.
Or, you might consider trying several targets one way, then several the other. Dunno about you, but for me … switching between methods quickly is for testing rather than learning.

Just opinion and anecdote, TIFWIW ...
 
Yes, understood and thanks animal for sharing that experience. I'm a well-established and accurate front sight guy (in shooting, not in posting on this forum), and I'm not mixing it up for fun but to test the techiques, and also test/train the eyes and brain.

While target focus may initially seem easier, as a retired USMC vet I do realize that the initially easiest method isn't always best for long-term, sustained success; and I have a decent foundation of shooting basics. Also, having gone to Front Sight in Pahrump NV, I know the value of the front sight and I've done fairly well in their defensive handgun course there.

I need to test this out at the range. Again, the proof lies in the bullet strike. Also, I can definitely use more regular practice.
 
I have always shot guns with both eyes open, unless I am shooting at distance and need a more precise aim. I always focus on my target and bring the gun to my eyes. I get a flash sight picture and fire. I spend about 70 -75% of my time shooting in this manner especially with my handguns.

I can get better hits using this method than a lot of people at the range who try hard to use the sights but they have a bad flinch and ruin any sight alignment they may have had prior to the trigger being pulled. I find that even when I focus on the sights I keep both eyes open when shooting my handguns. If you are shooting from 3-10 yards you should be able to get very good hits if you practice this way on a regular basis.
 
I have one: Using high magnification scopes, it's a real mind bender trying to make sense out of two images of apparent different sizes.

Try setting a your rifle scope on 10 or 12 power and keep both eyes open.... makes for a headache.

I shoot pistol, iron sighted rifles, and scout scoped rifles both eyes open. Conventional scoped rifles with large magnifications, dominant eye only.
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This post ^^ also makes an important point. When using high magnification, having both eyes open is not necessarily the best means for target acquisition. Perhaps for initially spotting the animal (if you don't have a lower magnification setting on your scope), but not for acquiring the final sight picture.

As for shooting with both eyes open for pistol shooting, I fully agree. It is more beneficial to have both eyes acquiring targets.
 
This post ^^ also makes an important point. When using high magnification, having both eyes open is not necessarily the best means for target acquisition. Perhaps for initially spotting the animal (if you don't have a lower magnification setting on your scope), but not for acquiring the final sight picture.
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It depends on how you are trained, what you are used to, and how well you can separate the vision of each eye. As a strongly right eye dominant person, I don't find it to be a problem with shooting a scoped rifle with both eyes open and using my right eye in the scope. I suspect that the more one eye dominant you are, the lessd of a probelm that is.

If I shoot left handed, however, I sometimes have to close my right eye to switch dominance to the left.

Once again, the benefit is that it gives you a field of vision not seen in the scope. Generally speaking, I don't see much out of the left eye when shooting right handed unless something draws my attention, such as movement. I can switch between my R scope eye and L nonscope eye fairly easily when I am sighted. So I can do a quick L eye visual scan while keeping the rifle on target, without moving my head around.

With that said, I am completely dysfunctional with the Bindon aiming concept. I cannot meld two fields of view such that I can see the red dot from my R eye FOV superimposed on my l eye FOV.
 
Like others have said before me, it does take practice. Especially if you've grown up ( Like I did ) in a environment where I was not taught properly how to shoot. I did not learn how to effectively hold/shoot a firearm until I was in my mid-twenties.

Heck, I still catch myself closing my left eye from time to time. Old habits are hard to kick.
 
I went to the range today on my lunch hour to test shooting with both eyes open. First time doing that – with interesting results. I shot 100 rounds. I haven't shot in a while; it has been over a year. I was way overdue.

Here are my results, with more info below: both eyes open and target (tgt) focus is worth exploring further, it works pretty well for me. My first-ever groups weren't too bad, and with practice I'm confident they'll get better and my speed will improve.

If you're inclined to argue against this, read the rest before you do, especially the note about why I cannot acquire the front sight (FS) with both eyes open. These results are mine and mine alone. I'm not about to start a shooting school and teach everyone to do it this way. In fact, I'm not going to tell anyone else to do it this way. These are preliminary results and I'll continue practicing.

I wear eyeglasses so I tested both with and without my glasses on, and also tgt focus and FS-focus, all four combinations (or permutations, if you will).

Targets: I set up two paper tgts identically, one each for 10' and 20'. On the back of each tgt paper I pasted 16 1" tgt spots to form a 4X4 grid, with each tgt spot about 8" from each other.

Shooting: No time constraints. The goal was to accurately acquire the tgt and establish good sight picture / sight alignment. My planned sequence of fire was to fire three rounds at each tgt spot, left-to-right and top-down in this manner: glasses on and tgt-focused @ 1st tgt spot; then glasses on and FS-focused @ 2nd tgt spot; repeat for 3rd and 4th tgt spots; then on the next row glasses off and do the same thing as in row 1. Repeat for rows 3 and 4. Then do the exact same thing but at 20' on the second tgt paper.

Note: Try as I might, I could not acquire the FS with both eyes open. It was too confusing for my brain to sort out the images. I'm pretty sure this is because I am usually right eye dominant (and I'm right handed), but at near distances my left eye is dominant. My left eye is nearsighted, and my right eye is astigmatic and is better for distant objects. At far distances, my right eye is clearly dominant, but I read with my left eye. For shooting, what I did instead of FS-focus with both eyes open, is FS-focus with left eye closed as I would normally shoot.

I tried with and without my eyeglasses because I need to make sure of how accurate I am in case I'm suddenly startled awake while sleeping at night and don't have time to get my eyeglasses. I hadn't done that before and talking with the guy at the range he suggested that. I'm glad he did, because I learned a lot from doing that.

Not able to FS-focus at all with both eyes open, I resorted to closing my left eye and shoot normally, focusing on the FS as I normally do.

Result best groupings:

#1) ¾" @10' and ¾" @20': glasses on, closed left eye
#2) 1" @10' and 2" @20': glasses off, closed left eye
#3) 1" @10' and 3" @20': glasses on, both eyes open, tgt-focus
#4) 2" @10' and 4" @20': glasses off, both eyes open, tgt-focus

Like I said, it has been a while since I've shot. I can do better than ¾" at 10'. Of course, closed left eye with FS-focus is naturally how I shoot, so no surprises with #1 and #2. But #3 is promising, and shooting with eyeglasses off (but safety glasses on) is also worth practicing for those night time surprises, if they ever happened.

It's time for more range time. I'll keep practicing with both eyes open. This is merely an initial assessment.
 
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