Multi-focal contacts?
General Topic
Got my eyes checked this morning, and the opti told me I could get contacts that would cover everything my 55-YO eyeballs might need.
Hmmmm.... awfully tempting.
I don’t use sights, so I don’t need really sharp, up-close focus to shoot, but I’m wondering if these would let me see well enough to hunt & shoot.
My vision is sharpest with single-vision contacts, of course, so that’s what I use when I’m out all day.... and then I have to use cheaters to see anything up close.
So I’m weighing my options and wondering what works well for all of you guys… Probably worth mentioning what kind of sights you use (if any) and what kind of prescription lenses are working out best for you.
I switched to contacts this season for the first time this year. The problem is unlike glasses you can`t see jack up close. With glasses I can see somewhat but with contacts I can`t see a thing. It`s hard to even get the release on the D-loop. So they suggested the bi-focals lenses also. My eye doctor suggested wearing only one lens in my dominate eye, and I`ll be damned if it didn`t work just fine. The length of time I wore them caused no eye fatigue or headaches.
I have a genetic eye condition called keratoconus, which renders me legally blind, both near and far, without correction. Thru the miracle of technology, I was fitted with special contact lenses that correct for my condition. I now have 20/20 distance vision, and can read all but the tiniest print up close. My lenses are expensive, but I'd pay whatever it costs to have good vision. It's been life changing.
I'd say give the multi-focal lenses a try. You'll love not having to use cheaters up close. If they don't work out, you can always go back to single-vision lenses.
Matt
GF yourself - I recently switched to a Ultra multifocal toric contact lenses. It has been about a month. I would say distant vision is almost as good as the contact I was wearing before the multifocal. Seeing up close is not as good as wearing a pair of readers. But good enough to see what I need to see in small print. If reading a long period of time say a book I prefer to add readers with my contacts or put on my bifocals. They beat the hell out of wear contacts, what I prefer and always having readers around my neck.
Your eye doc should be willing to order you a pair of samples to try. That is what I did and wore them for a couple weeks before I ordered them. I believe I paid $330 for six pair of monthlies. I will usually get 2 months out of pair but like I said I am only a month into first pair so I don't know if these will last as long as older pairs.
At this point I would recommended them especially if your day to day activities require a lot of going back and forth from looking a distance and reading small print that requires readers. Biggest down fall is I have to fend of even more women now that I don't have reads on my head.
I do the mono vision with contacts also. Close up for right eye and distance for left eye. this has worked extremely well for me. I shoot a single pin Hog father sight.
I would recommend getting extended wear that you can sleep in. Learned from experience it's a pain to take contacts out and try to put them in in the dark while hunting out of a backpacking tent. I can leave mine in a month.
I tried what Yellowjacket is saying. One for far and one for near. They made me dizzy so after a few days I baled on them. Now just have contacts for distance and glasses for reading.
I have the bifocal contacts and been using them for 6 months. I like them but wind and dry weather can mess them up. I just carry eye drops. Try multiple types and brands til you get then exactly how you like. Took me 3 tries. I use the kind you can leave in for 2 weeks. I didn’t like the monthly ones. Wish I did.
I shoot a 1/4 peep with Trophy Ridge React Vertical 5 pin sights and love them. I can see them and my target well with contacts.
True Dat! I lost a lens one year in a cold, dry breezy tree stand. Found it on my pillow several days later....
When I told my eye doc I can`t see anything close like I can with my glasses he said "get cheaters". I said "wait a minute, I got contacts to get rid of a pair of glasses and now you want me to wear contacts AND a pair of glasses, are you f.....g crazy".....lmao
I could never wear contacts until those dailies came out....this fall in a wall tent elk hunt I had to allow myself 15 extra minutes to get the things in every morning. I agree the drops are a must.
I wear contacts for outdoor activities for distance like shooting traditional bows. My glasses are trifocal progressive lenses and doesn't work to well for shooting.
For those who want to get more mileage out of their contact lenses, I highly recommend the Clear Care cleaning solution. My lenses are suppose to be 6 months per pair, but I've gotten over 2 years out of my current set by using Clear Care. They are just as comfortable now as they were when new.
I also sleep with my lenses in, especially on hunts, but I find that after about week I need to take them out and soak them overnight, or else they become irritating.
Matt
Kind of a relief to find out I’m not the only cheapskate around… I have “dailies“, but I I’ve been wearing them 3 to 5 days per pair, just so that I don’t run out prematurely. I can’t wear them at work, so it’s a weekend-only deal for me…
So I’m now looking at a pair of progressives for 0 to 10 feet, and a pair of single-vision glasses for basically anything outdoors or in a large space like a hockey game. Not as sharp as contacts, but a lot quicker on & off. Still need some drug-store cheaters for up-close when I have the contacts in, but I can deal with that...
Guess I’m going to compromise on convenience, rather than clarity....
I have bifocal glasses and "normal" contacts. Can't read squat with the contacts in unless I am in sunlight. Had to have my wife help make sure I cut out the right date on an antelope tag :-( Menus are a lost cause in my contacts.
On the plus side I only wear contacts hunting, hiking etc. Wear glasses 90% of the time. Doesn't effect shooting my bow or rifle, but glassing is much easier in contacts.
I've worn gas permeable contacts for over 40 years. For a couple years, I had bifocal contacts and they were "OK", but for close reading, they worked better in brighter light. I lost a lens and discovered monovision. My eye doctor put me into a set of lenses (near-left/distant-right) and it is amazing how the brain can knit the images from each eye such that one can have excellent distance vision and still read the smallest print. A good fitting pair of lenses will provide comfort in even the most dustiest conditions. It has been rare that I ever have to remove and wash a lens due to something getting under a lens. I did notice that when I went to the range, I had a little trouble focusing on the sights. It was due to the focal length of my short lens. My doctor fixed me up with a "shooting" lens with a little longer focal length which solved the problem. I had it made in a different color to identify which lens was which.
I recently had an eye exam and found out that I had developed cataracts in both of my eyes...and unbelievably to the point where I qualified for lens replacement. I will have my replacement lenses done such that I will have monovision as I have had with my contacts. Worse thing is that I have to use my glasses(non-bifocal) for over a month before they can do the first lens replacement. The eye takes time to adjust from wearing contacts before they can determine what the replacement lens needs to be.
"they are a 30 day lens, but I can get 3-4 more time with them this way ..." Until you ulcerate......
doc, please elaborate on the ulcerate
Tough to see through your peep sight with one of these bad boys.
Fun for both the patient and practitioner ;)
Give them a nice warm environment to grow. Give them a chance to proliferate on the contact...And just a small break in the cornea epithelium and you'll wish you never heard of contact lenses.
Dont sleep in them..Ever IMO. They are a great tool but extended wear lenses are asking for trouble IMO. We can lessen the risk with better material but its always there and when the wheels fall off the bus its bad news.
Eyad you are being too kind.Thats a lucky guy with possible sparring of the visual axis.Give fate a chance and that ulcer can be more central and blind.
Geezus. I'm about to go throw all my contacts in the trash.
There was a guy with one a while ago on the internet and it was horrible....it was black and spooky.
I wear mine to hunt with and then they come out.
Take care of your lenses and be compliant with the prescribed wearing schedule to the tee and problems are a rarity with a non sleeping regimen
Was trying to keep the glass half full Steve;)
Seriously though, as Genesis said, just follow the wear schedule and rarely do I see issues. I wear contacts every day, dailies that I throw away each night, and have had great success. I would say that nearly all my contact lens issues in the clinic are either overnight wear or old lenses.
I think I like the H2O2 solution better now....
Here is my situation.
I am 42. I still see quite well up close. I can still see small print on a driver license at arms length. My problem is my far distance is terrible, especially at night. I can't even read road signs until I am pretty close to them.
I am a compound shooter and use a 1/4 peep and pins. When I shoot, my target AND pins are blurry. I can still shoot pretty well in bright light because neither is to bad. But once the sun goes down, it becomes a real challenge with them being blurry. I manage to still be able to shoot accurately, but its getting worse and worse and eventually I will HAVE to do something once I am not comfortable shooting at an animal.
I have tried contacts and glasses for my distant vision. They cleared the target up great, but it blurred the pins so bad that they were unusable. I only tried it a couple hours and when I couldn't get the pins to focus so went back to shooting with bare yes.
Have any of you ran into this? if so, how did you fix it? KSflatlander sounded like these bifocal contacts worked for him in a situation like this. Any one else?
Thanks.
I experimented with various answers to the problem of bowhunting with poor vision, and the best answer I found was the "monovision" approach, as described above. The right eye is corrected for sharp vision at 30 inches (about the distance to my sight pins, the front sight on my long guns that don't wear a scope, and my computer screen), and the left corrected for distance vision. That correction level in the right eye also allows me to read the labels in the items at the store if they're not extremely small, but if I'm going to read a book, I want do it without the contacts and with my regular eyeglasses on, which are bifocals with the conventional correction strengths for both eyes.
As JTV mentioned above, it does take some experimenting to find the exact combination that's perfect for your eyes and your uses. You can get pretty close with the recommendations of your eye-care provider, but it's sorta like choosing your hunting boots from a chart, a week or two of actual use may reveal the need for a change.
One problem that I did encounter with shooting with my monovision contact prescriptions was that under certain lighting conditions I would get an unexplained miss wide right, usually about a foot right when shooting a target at around thirty yards, on a shot that felt just fine at the 3D courses. Just happened occasionally, maybe once or twice a shoot, but it was aggravating because I couldn't find the reason. I shot a lot of practice , and the problem never happened while shooting practice rounds at home. Finally, it dawned on me that the difference was I was just shooting those practice rounds with my regular daily wear bifocals glasses on and I usually put my contacts in for going to a 3D shoot. Following up on that clue, I discovered that my eyes would somehow "short-circuit" in aiming and I would still see the clearer vision of the target with my distance-corrected left eye while also centering the pin on it looking through the peep with my left. Sounded impossible and I still can't explain it in a way that might satisfy an eye doctor, but when I verified it a few times and simply began closing my left eye at full draw, the problem went away.
For me, going back to closing the left eye at fu;ll draw wasn't much of a problem, as I had shot that way for a few years indoors when I was youger, and I could still use the sharp distance vision of the left eye for everything up until the final aiming for the shot, and then just made it a habit again to close it for the few seconds of settling on the spot and releasing.
You may never have that problem, but if it does crop up while you're shooting with monovision correction, try closing the eye that's corrected fo distance vision and see if that fixes it.
Koon,
When you closed your distance corrected left eye, did the target blur back up?
Got two pairs of the single vision, one light and one darker for outdoor stuff and a new wider progressive. Might even try switching to shooting a bow with them. Two pair for $70. At vision works. Single vision way better in the woods.
I echo what Hawkeye and Genesis have said. If you eliminate overwear of contact lenses, you will eliminate 90% of contact lens problems. A multifocal CL may work for you and it may not. Really, you just need to try them. The real problem is we are all getting old and no contact lens fixes that. No one thing works for everyone. Depending on how much your vision bothers you depends on how many different options you may want to try. Have patience and Good Luck!
Russ - what you did there was to make yourself cross-dominant. No big mystery to it.
Mountainman - get yourself some vision correction. Just get some small, bright FO pins and Center Fuzzy is just as centered as Center Sharp.
Sure, a little. But the right eye contact lens was still doing its job, which was helping some with distance vision, just not as much as the left. The target or animal can be a little fuzzy and you'll still place the sharply focused pin on the right spot. But if the pin is out of focus, you won't see it at all when the light starts to fade in the evening or before full light in the morning, when the hunting's at it's best. And if you do see your pins and they're out of focus, you'll see just some furry blob of color that's hard to place with any precision on the spot you want to hit.
Hey Matt....... Would you mind tell me (us) what those contacts are that you have? My eyesight is very poor without glasses or contacts and I basically wear contacts all the time, though I DO take them out at night.
But to read that you have 20/20 corrected vision is very interesting to me so I'd like to know what brand you were prescribed.
GF, it's a little more complicated than that. I've used a peep for a couple of generations, hunting and target. The mysterious part comes in when I am seeing the target through the peep and seeing the pin on the target, but I'm really aiming a foot to the right. Has to be something similar to cross-dominance, but taken to another level that actually has me seeing the pin lined up on target , while looking through the peep, even though they are not in that position. Sort of a mental photoshop trick that only occurs occasionally under certain circumstances of lighting and distance. I know about cross-dominance, always been that way. Started out with right-handed bows and a stronger left eye, and put a sight on the bow as soon as I started getting serious about archery, and learned to shoot with the left eye closed long ago. Over the years, gradually let that habit go and found I didn't need to do that anymore....until I changed the balance between the quality of the image the brain was receiving eyes from what it had been for fifty years to a newer relationship that apparently confused the old CPU when sorting them out.
But anyway, the solution was the same as when I started seriously shooting targets, just shut the other eye.
The problem I had probably doesn't affect most people who shoot that way. It doesn't even affect me except under those conditions of light and distance that create just the right conditions. I just wanted to give anyone else that might run into the same symptoms a heads up on the possible cause that can be tough to find with trial and error.
I would agree with your advice to mm if his pin fuzziness is in the first level of the problem. But even then, the presbyopia tends to worsen as we age, and the slightly fuzzy pin today becomes just a fuzzy blob the size of a golf ball, and the once -bright FO pin needs to be green, then the light needs to be brighter, then it disappears altogether under most indoor lighting and some outdoor conditions. It's worthwhile to sharpen the vision in the aiming eye to start with and adjust as needed to keep it sharp as it changes through the years. Might seem like more trouble right now, but it's better than hunting with compromised vision for the rest of your life because you didn't want to take a few days to learn the details about the problem and fix it right the first time.
Many of us in our golden years have quit hunting the last twenty minutes because we couldn't see our sight pins any more, even after going to FO and green color and larger pin size. Correcting the vision in the aiming eye to a focal distance of thirty inches isn't that hard to do, and it beats sitting at home while the big ones are coming out to feed.
I only need readers so I have multifocal contacts. I can shoot wearing them but the pins are clear and the target is blurry. The opposite of what I want so I don't wear them hunting. They also kind of screw with my depth perception and makes seeing things at a distance in the outdoors a little more difficult.
I wear mine for work (computer) and normal daily stuff but they come out for hunting and shooting. I never sleep with them in. Sometimes I go all weekend without wearing them and just use the cheaters.
GF- When I say so blurry its usable, there is no centering it. I wouldn't even know where the center of the huge oblong color haze is(what my glasses currently do if wearing them to shoot). I definitely agreed that I need to start experimenting with vision correction soon.
Thanks everyone for all the info. This is great thread.
That’s part of why I’m dutifully checking my anchor about 99% of the time - as long as I know I’m anchored correctly, I don’t need real sharp focus on the arrow to see that it's pointed down the middle.
Actually, I think.the multi-focal contacts could work out better for me for shooting (barebow) than for anything else; I guess there are concentric rings, so (conceivably) the arrow (outer ring) and target (center of lens) could be brought into focus at the same time. At least in the right range bracket. I just think that would totally SUCK for my day-to-day...
For those with the "fuzzy pins" look into a lensed peep. This has worked for many.
