Switching Shoulders

 

If I am left eye dominant but do everything from the right side, should I switch to left-handed shooting?

 

Well, it depends. The first thing I suggest is to spend some time with an instructor experienced in diagnosing and solving eye dominance challenges. I see many shooters who have been told that their dominance was one thing only to discover that it’s something different. I often see a shooter who thinks they are dominant in one eye and they are actually center ocular. If this shooter switched shoulders, he or she would likely have the same issue on the other shoulder.

But let’s assume that what you say is accurate: you are left-eye dominant and shoot on the right side. While you would have been better off to start shooting on the left shoulder, whether or not you should switch to the left side now depends on how often you shoot, how much work and practice you are willing to commit to switching shoulders, and what type of shooting you do. If, for example, a 57-year-old shooter came to me and says he is strictly a bird hunter who shoots three to five times a year, I would more than likely recommend that he shut down (wink) the non-shooting eye immediately after acquiring the bird with both eyes open and just before the comb reaches the cheek. If the shooter were a 16-year-old who just started shooting a few months ago and wants to get serious about shooting, I would switch him over to the side of his dominant eye.

In short, the younger a person is combined with the amount of work they are willing to dedicate to the switch are the most critical factors. If the shooter is serious about target shooting yet either does not want to switch over or has a physical reason for not doing so, then we may work with a couple of different options: winking, a dot on the glasses, or in some cases, just shooting and practicing enough to get the right subconscious sight picture.