paulvallandigham
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- Jan 9, 2006
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All mammals are born with bi-lateral symmetry. That is where dominant side and non-dominant side arise. The brain has two halves, and one half does more of the work than the other. It is said that Left handed people are in their Right Mind!( meaning, right half of the brain controls the motor functions on the left side, and vice versa.)
In life, we find people who do not have a history of disciplining their concentration when doing fine motor coordination skills, and those are the folks who easily cross over during shooting- its a form of flinching. The cure is to close the non-dominant eye, until you learn to focus ONLY with the dominant eye.
My second wife suffered from this problem, and that is how we cured her. However, she was NOT a cold weather shooter, so every spring, when we began shooting TRAP again, she had to shoot a few round with her left eye closed, before she could begin to shoot with both eyes open again.
She had 28 years of living before I got her shooting, and taught her how to concentrate with her dominant eye, and NOT switch to her Non-dominant eye when she slapped the trigger on her shotgun.
When we stood behind her and looked down the side of the barrel as she called the target, tracked it and then fired, you could see the sudden movement of the muzzle as she switched to her Left eye, and invariably she missed the clay target. When we had her close her left eye, her depth perception was affected, but she hit the clays regularly. My late friend, James N. Gabbard, Jr. helped me diagnose the problem. He had a raised berm in his back yard, along a drainage ditch. We put clay target spaced about 10 feet apart, and had Ann shoot them, or try to shoot them. She was under them by 2 feet, and to the left by 3 feet, standing back at about 50 feet. We got the elevation problem fixed pretty quickly, but the windage issue wasn't cured until we looked carefully at what she was doing when the gun went off. With her left eye closed, she left nothing but ink spots in the grass where the clays had been. I let her shoot all of them, to help her feel better about being able to hit SOMETHING, at last. After that, she was enthusiastic to try shooting hand thrown clays with the left eye closed. The next week at the Trap club, she shot a 16 out of 25 birds- a HUGE improvement for her. By the end of that first season, she was breaking 20-22 targets per round, from the 16 yd. line.
In life, we find people who do not have a history of disciplining their concentration when doing fine motor coordination skills, and those are the folks who easily cross over during shooting- its a form of flinching. The cure is to close the non-dominant eye, until you learn to focus ONLY with the dominant eye.
My second wife suffered from this problem, and that is how we cured her. However, she was NOT a cold weather shooter, so every spring, when we began shooting TRAP again, she had to shoot a few round with her left eye closed, before she could begin to shoot with both eyes open again.
She had 28 years of living before I got her shooting, and taught her how to concentrate with her dominant eye, and NOT switch to her Non-dominant eye when she slapped the trigger on her shotgun.
When we stood behind her and looked down the side of the barrel as she called the target, tracked it and then fired, you could see the sudden movement of the muzzle as she switched to her Left eye, and invariably she missed the clay target. When we had her close her left eye, her depth perception was affected, but she hit the clays regularly. My late friend, James N. Gabbard, Jr. helped me diagnose the problem. He had a raised berm in his back yard, along a drainage ditch. We put clay target spaced about 10 feet apart, and had Ann shoot them, or try to shoot them. She was under them by 2 feet, and to the left by 3 feet, standing back at about 50 feet. We got the elevation problem fixed pretty quickly, but the windage issue wasn't cured until we looked carefully at what she was doing when the gun went off. With her left eye closed, she left nothing but ink spots in the grass where the clays had been. I let her shoot all of them, to help her feel better about being able to hit SOMETHING, at last. After that, she was enthusiastic to try shooting hand thrown clays with the left eye closed. The next week at the Trap club, she shot a 16 out of 25 birds- a HUGE improvement for her. By the end of that first season, she was breaking 20-22 targets per round, from the 16 yd. line.
