my dilemma left eye dominate and right handed....

[adkmountainken]

i am left eye dominate but right handed. taught myself to shoot flintlocks years ago right handed and never had a problem. fast forward 25 years thought i would treat myself to a couple left handed guns and bought a couple beauty's! dam if i cant get comfortable with them, they fit me better for sure but to prime and fidget with lock left handed is beyond challenging! cap lock is not bad but i love my flinters. anyone else in the same boat? i finally gave up and i;m going back to just right handed flinters and selling a couple of my leftys.  should have "left" well enough alone i guess have filled plenty a deer and turkey tag with my righty flinters.

[Seth Isaacson]

I'm in the same boat in terms of dominance. I shoot right handed rifles and just deal with it and use my right eye. If I'm shooting pistols, I shoot right handed but use my left eye.

[GrizG]

I'm in the same boat. I adopted shooting long guns left handed while in my mid-teens. I'm rather ambidextrous with long guns and long handled tools that require aiming (e.g., axes, sledge hammers)... handguns and darts are shot right handed/left eyed with adapted stances. That said, I mostly have single shot rifles and two shot shotguns. My flintlock rifle is left handed (Siler) but my cap lock guns are right handed. I guess 50+ years of practice makes it a non-issue for me...

[flembo]

I too am cross dominant, i just deal with it, I shoot with my right and close my left. When I was 8 or 9 yrs. old I couldn't close my left eye while keeping my right open. I would lie in bed for hours at night practicing, I was determined to shoot with my right eye. BTW before that I played cowboys and Indians with my pop gun shooting many an Indian and bad guys, shooting right handed using my left eye. My father saw me doing that and tried to correct me, that is when we learned about cross dominance.

[D. Taylor Sapergia]

I am left handed and right eye dominant.  So I shoot right handed longrifles and have the advantage of superior strength in my left arm.  So I can hold a heavy right handed rifle in my left hand more steadily than some other shooters.  I shoot handguns with my strong hand - left, and use my right eye, so it looks awkward but it works well.

[smylee grouch]

Yep, right eye is shot so had to switch. I before shot with both eyes open but last spring found my self looking down the side of the barrel. Then it came to me my right eye was gone and my left eye took over dominance.

[Daryl]

I do kind of the same SmyleeG. If I try to shoot a rifle with both eyes open, I see the sights, ghostly, but I can see them, then the side of the rifle, then the sights, back and forth. Close
 the left eye and sights are solid. Have to shoot a rifle or handgun with left eye closed. Shotguns, shoulder the gun, both eyes open and swing look only at the target, pass and dust. I
guess the gun barrels are kind of  ghostly looking under my hands. Where ever my left hand points, that's where my eyes are concentrating.

[Eric Kettenburg]

It's really not rocket science.  Either learn to shoot comfortably left hand, or close your left eye.

I've had a deteriorating right eye since I was born and by the time I was 17 or 18 could no longer really see out of my right eye well enough to shoot.  I am right handed.  So I just forced myself to switch to LH shooting.  I didnt find it to be that big of a deal but it dd take a year or so to get actually "comfortable" with it, meaning to where it felt natural.

There really is no alternative, other than just closing your left eye so that your dominant eye is doing all the work.  That's if you simply can;t adapt and have to keep shooting RH.  I think anyone can adapt but it takes time and a good deal of shooting to accomplish it.  If you can;t shoot a lot, it's going to make it more difficult because it then becomes awkward and you don;t build up a muscle memory in the actual process of shouldering, shooting, loading etc.

One thing I have found is that since I made the switch when I was younger, I was able to do many more things left handed dominant more easily as was mentioned above. For someone working with their hands, this has been a great benefit.

[James Rogers]

It's really not rocket science.  Either learn to shoot comfortably left hand, or close your left eye.

I've had a deteriorating right eye since I was born and by the time I was 17 or 18 could no longer really see out of my right eye well enough to shoot.  I am right handed.  So I just forced myself to switch to LH shooting.  I didnt find it to be that big of a deal but it dd take a year or so to get actually "comfortable" with it, meaning to where it felt natural.

There really is no alternative, other than just closing your left eye so that your dominant eye is doing all the work.  That's if you simply can;t adapt and have to keep shooting RH.  I think anyone can adapt but it takes time and a good deal of shooting to accomplish it.  If you can;t shoot a lot, it's going to make it more difficult because it then becomes awkward and you don;t build up a muscle memory in the actual process of shouldering, shooting, loading etc.

One thing I have found is that since I made the switch when I was younger, I was able to do many more things left handed dominant more easily as was mentioned above. For someone working with their hands, this has been a great benefit.

This in a nutshell. If one is a casual shooter or does not have availability or desire to shoot consistently often then winking down, blocking or closing an eye will be easier and less frustrating. If one is a dedicated habitual shooter or desires to be competitive then switch hands.

[Austin]

Im exactly the same as Taylor….. works for me

[Daryl]

It's really not rocket science.  Either learn to shoot comfortably left hand, or close your left eye.

I've had a deteriorating right eye since I was born and by the time I was 17 or 18 could no longer really see out of my right eye well enough to shoot.  I am right handed.  So I just forced myself to switch to LH shooting.  I didnt find it to be that big of a deal but it dd take a year or so to get actually "comfortable" with it, meaning to where it felt natural.

There really is no alternative, other than just closing your left eye so that your dominant eye is doing all the work.  That's if you simply can;t adapt and have to keep shooting RH.  I think anyone can adapt but it takes time and a good deal of shooting to accomplish it.  If you can;t shoot a lot, it's going to make it more difficult because it then becomes awkward and you don;t build up a muscle memory in the actual process of shouldering, shooting, loading etc.

One thing I have found is that since I made the switch when I was younger, I was able to do many more things left handed dominant more easily as was mentioned above. For someone working with their hands, this has been a great benefit.

I have a close friend, local chap who went blind in his right eye.  He shoots a lot of air rifles and pistols indoors and said it was easy to switch to being left handed, for shooting. No choice.

[Eric Kettenburg]

Exactly!  When you can't see the sights OR the target or really anything, it's not like there is much of an alternative!

[smylee grouch]

When I had to switch from right to left, one of the hardest things for me was at first I would, out of habit mount the gun right handed and then have to switch. The actual shooting part wasn't that hard for me to do once I got the correct eye looking through the sights. 

[smokinbuck]

When I lost the use of my right eye I had a devil of a time switching to lefty. While re training myself I put a small,3/4", mirror on the left side of the rifle, close to the action, and another on the tang. The tang mirror effectively blocked my bad eye. I could mount the rifle right handed and use my left eye to see the forward mirror which reflected back to the tang  mirror and acted like a horizontal periscope. I still have it set up and will try to post some pics.

[smylee grouch]

Don't make it any more complicated than it has to be. Just close your right eye and shoot from the left shoulder. You will get the hang of it the first range session.

[WadePatton]

I am not in the same boat, but I can easier imagine handling long guns on my weak-side than to shoot to my non-dominant eye (with open sights). The transition probably works best when you commit regular practice and avoid shooting strong-sided for a reasonable length of time. It'll take a minute for the fresh neural pathways and muscle tone, etc. to strengthen and lend to feeling doable. Hang in there if you go that way. It has taken four months of nearly daily practice for my new swing to feel more natural than my old one, but it's pretty solid now. Soon it'll be like I never did it differently. Switching shooting sides is likely a bit tougher, but should come around if you commit. Good luck.

[ScottNE]

I'm strongly left-eye dominant, but right-handed. I've never really had any trouble shooting with my right eye, I just close my left eye. Ive tried shooting left-handed, and it felt like I was twisting myself into knots. I can shoot handguns either hand but much more comfortably right-handed -- left-eye dominance doesn't compensate for how weak my left hand is in comparison to my right. Everybody is different but I'd say that if you've always shot right-handed fairly well, why fix what ain't broke?

A couple of my brothers are left-handed and right-eyed. People joke that we should trade eyes, but my vision is 20/15 and my brothers wear glasses that look like the bottom of a coke bottle, so I'd be losing quite a bit in that trade.

[LH]

[Daryl]

More than one way to skin a cat, I see.  Those barrel screws holding up OK? Lots of torque on them under recoil.

[LH]

I've been using these offset bases for two years now and haven't had any problems with the screws so far. Probably at least 1000 rounds on every gun with these bases.   I remove the sights and bases for transport so the guns will fit in a case.  Screws are #6x48tpi mostly.  I have one gun I switched to 8x40's after I cross threaded and stripped a hole out.  Half blind, old & feeble has many dividends.  Then again, I stripped screws when I was 20 too.  My offhand guns are all .38 and .40 caliber and I don't shoot heavy charges.    Probably the biggest drawback is windage adjustment for every yardage.  When I made the first offset bases, I used strips of sheet metal and magnets to figure out where exactly the sight needed to be to get them in front of my left eye while aiming with a solid cheek weld.  They are 1.9" left of the bore and about the same amount higher than the bore.  So when I'm zeroed for 25yds, I'm hitting 1.9" left at 50yds and 3.8" left at 100.  Thats what prompted me to convert this Redfield International sight to an open sight.  So I can return to zero's with acccuracy.  I use Kensight XP100's on a couple of guns and they work pretty good, but backlash and some built in innacuracy often requires more than a few shots to be sure of my offhand zero.  This old Redfield is completely accurate with zero backlash.