DISCOVERING YOUR DOMINANT EYE
What is your dominant eye? Its the eye you aim with. It is very easy to figure this out and has some implications in outdoor sports. I was first told about eye dominance when I was pistol target shooting. The simplest way to do this is to hold your hands out in front of you and create a triangle using your fingers and thumbs, as seen in the picture below. Once you have the triangle, move your hands so that an object is in the center. Close one eye. The object will either stay in the center of your triangle or it will seem like your hands/object have moved. The eye that was open when the triangle did not move is your dominant eye. This is usually the eye that is most natural to leave open.
Right eyed but left handed!
When I started out target shooting I discovered I was right eyed. This isn’t an issue for most people because they also right handed, but I am left handed. When I was pistol and rifle shooting I never had a problem. I started shooting with pistols using basic iron sites and learned to shoot with a right handed gun as most guns are right handed. I didn’t want to go to the trouble of getting a left handed gun. It wasn’t until I became interested in archery that I found I had an issue. The first time I shot archery I was a child at a camp. They simply asked me what hand I used to write with and handed me the bow. I was never very good at archery and I thought “It just wasn’t the sport for me.” I was disappointed because I had so much fun shooting and loved the idea of archery but I just wasn’t any good. It wasn’t until I was an adult and wanted to give it another try that I learned that having a different dominant hand than your eye can cause a problem. When I learned about this I read a few articles. Some said that you can learn to aim with both eyes open. I also read that you can either train to use a different eye or a different hand. I decided to train to use my other hand and started shooting right handed. This made sense as I already learned to shoot guns right handed and it made sense to do the same with archery. After some practice it was easy and comfortable to shoot my bow right handed and now don’t even think about it.