Bowsite.com

Eyes

At one point on here the question came up whether you shoot with two eyes open, or one eye open. Hopefully not zero eyes. Well, I’m watching some kind of elite women’s archery competition. USA vs Russia. They all have a peep, they all put their nose on the string and, surprisingly to me, they all shoot with two eyes open.

I shot a compound bow with sights and peep for over 30 years with both eyes open. Your dominate eye will ensure correct sighting and with two eyes open a better field of view and depth perception. I switched to shooting recurve bows instinctively with both eyes open for same reasons.

One word of caution. Both eyes open only if you are shooting with your dominant eye. Almost 1/3 of people have a different dominant eye than their hands. I'm one of them. Last year I finally managed to switch to a left handed bow after decades of inconsistency. It was night and day shooting with my dominant left eye.

Percent of people with cross eye dominance: It is believed that 85-90 percent of the world's population is right handed. However, about 2/3 of the population is right eye dominant, and 1/3 is left eye dominant. Only a small number (thought to be around 1 percent) have no dominance by either eye.Jul 6, 2012

I will add—I was surprised that the shooting wasn’t better. Saw that it was on TV, and thought I’d watch it because the shooting would knock my socks off, and it didn’t. They were shooting with totally tricked-out equipment (ie nothing to impede accuracy) at 55 meters, which is ~50 yards. A long shot, but not outrageous. Would have expected them to drill it every single shot, and they didn’t. Unbelievably, I think I (and probably most folks on this web site) could have held up alright in this competition. Very surprising.

i watched the olympics and thought the same thing

Tekoa, interesting point you bring up. I'm right eye dominant and right handed so it doesn't matter to me, but my daughter is right handed/left eye dominant. I always figured she should shoot (gun, bow, whatever) according to her dominant hand but a few years ago I noticed her trying to sight with her left eye while shooting a rifle right handed. Looked really awkward. She decided to try shooting left handed and saw immediate improvement. She noticed the same thing when shooting a bow at summer camp, instant improvement when switching to lefty.

Register here to reply to this topic