Eye dominance in shooting: which eye to aim with

• Test your eye dominance before you choose a side to shoot from. It takes a minute, and no gun.
• Aim with your dominant eye if you can, from the hand or shoulder on the same side.
• Keep both eyes open, and put something translucent in front of the other eye if it sees the sights too.
• Cross-dominant: screen the dominant eye and aim with the other, bring the dominant eye to the sights, or shoot from the other side.
• Try each way over a few sessions, and let your groups decide.

The common test is a hole made with your hands, a version of what vision researchers call the Miles test. Shooting Sports USA describes it like this:

1. With both eyes open, look at a small object at least 10 to 12 feet, about 3 to 3.7 m, away.
2. Stretch your arms out, bring your hands together so the webs of your thumbs make a small hole, and look at the object through it.
3. Slowly bring your hands to your face, keeping the object in the hole.
4. Your hands end up in front of one eye. That is your dominant eye.

A coach can watch instead and see which eye looks through the hole. The CMP’s rimfire guide uses a ring of thumb and index finger. The pistol guide of the US Army Marksmanship Unit (USAMU) makes a ring of fingers and thumb too, and has you close each eye in turn: the dominant eye is the one that still sees the object inside the ring.

Try more than one test. In a Mayo Clinic study of 46 adults, each test gave very consistent answers when repeated, but different tests agreed only moderately or slightly: the result depended on the distance and the task. Optometrist Norman Wong, writing in Shooting Sports USA, adds a check of how strong the dominance is: hold up a thumb in front of an object across the room, focus on the object, and note which of the two blurred thumbs holds and which fades. If the left one, your right eye’s view, holds better, your right eye is dominant.

Last, check it with the gun, unloaded and checked, the ammunition out of the room and the muzzle in a safe direction. Aim with both eyes open, then close each eye in turn: when the sight picture stays put, the eye still open was doing the aiming.

For most people, Shooting Sports USA says, the best shooting comes from firing with the dominant hand and aiming with the dominant eye. The two are not always on the same side. About one person in three is left-eyed, says a 1996 meta-analysis of 54,087 people in 54 populations; where 37 % are left-eyed and 9 % left-handed, it estimated, about 34 % of right-handers and 57 % of left-handers are left-eyed. A shooter whose dominant eye is on the other side from the shooting hand or shoulder is cross-dominant.

It can matter while you learn. In a 1996 pilot study of 308 recruits at Fort Benning, a US Army base, 86.1 % of those who shouldered the rifle on the side of their dominant eye qualified after basic rifle marksmanship training, against 56.5 % of those who shouldered it on the other side. In Shooting Sports USA’s Expert Forum, the Olympic champion rifleman Lones Wigger told shooters to use the dominant eye unless its vision is impaired and the other eye sees better.

If both thumbs look the same in Wong’s check, he writes, you can typically shoot well with either eye, as neither dominates much. Choose the side that suits your hands, and screen the other eye.

Open, if you can. With both eyes open, the USAMU’s guide points out, the line of sight is still one eye’s; you only stop closing the other.

Closing an eye costs light. In the Expert Forum, Wong explains that when you close the non-aiming eye, its pupil widens in the dimmer light, and so does the aiming eye’s. A wider pupil gives less depth of focus: the front sight may stay clear while the target grows more blurred. Closing one eye may also tighten the aiming eye’s lids and alter how it sees.

But with both eyes open the other eye sees the sights too, and some shooters see two sight pictures, as the action pistol champion Julie Golob notes in the same forum. That is what a blinder is for. Champions differ: one past national pistol champion simply closed his non-aiming eye, others have used a black patch or translucent tape. Pick what lets you aim relaxed, without squinting; where to focus is in Sight picture and sight alignment.

A blinder, or occluder, hides the sights from the eye that is not aiming. It can be:

• a short strip of translucent tape on that lens of your shooting glasses, or a strip of cardboard 1 to 1.5 inches (25 to 38 mm) wide in your cap band, both from the CMP’s rimfire guide;
• a flip-up eyeshield on a shooting-glasses frame: Gehmann lists them for Knobloch frames in black, translucent and white;
• on a rifle, a blinder on the sight, which Wigger suggests for when the other eye takes over.

Choose a white, translucent blinder or tape over a black one: Wong advises it, to let as much light as possible reach your eyes and keep the pupils small. Make it no bigger than needed. Judy Tant, a national bullseye pistol champion, told the forum that her small tab of translucent tape blocks the target only in her stance, leaving much of the lens clear for scoring.

Match rules limit blinders, so check a strip’s size before a match. Under the ISSF’s rules, side blinders on a cap or glasses are for shotgun athletes only (6.7.8.1), and every athlete may use one front blinder over the non-aiming eye (6.7.8.2). Its size limit, and the rules for a rifle’s rear-sight blinder, are in Air rifle equipment. Other matches may have their own rules.

With a pistol in one hand, you have three ways:

• Use the other hand. The CMP’s guide to junior pistol shooting says aiming should, if possible, be done with the eye on the side of the arm that holds the pistol. It still puts most shooters on their natural hand, and suggests the eye test for a new shooter who cannot decide.
• Keep your hand and aim with the other eye, with a strip of cardboard or translucent plastic in your cap or headband to block the dominant eye’s view of the sights, as the same guide suggests. Tant, right-handed and left-eye dominant, aims with her right eye, with translucent tape on her left lens.
• Keep your hand and bring the dominant eye to the sights. Carroll Pilant, an action pistol champion who is right-handed and left-eye dominant, told the Expert Forum that he closes his right eye and rolls his head slightly right, so his left eye lines up with the pistol, one-handed too.

Go easy on the head. The USAMU’s guide wants it as natural as possible, with the least tilt: looking at the target from under the eyebrows or sideways tires the eye muscles and makes the eye quiver more. Face the target with your head, not just your eyes. Where you look can even change which eye dominates: in one lab study, of reaching for and grasping near objects rather than shooting, the dominant eye switched when people looked to the side, on average at only 15.5 degrees off centre.

Then let the card decide. On a range, under its rules, shoot a few groups each way on the same day, each on its own card, and compare: Shooter shows the group size on each card you scan, or measure them as Reading your shot groups shows. A new hand or head position changes your stance, so find your natural point of aim again.

The CMP’s rimfire guide gives cross-dominant shooters two good options: shoot from the shoulder on the dominant eye’s side, or from the other shoulder with the dominant eye’s view of the sights blocked, by tape on the glasses or a strip in the cap band.

The guide wants the choice made before you shoulder a rifle for the first time. That is also when switching is easiest, with no habits to unlearn. Ask whether your club has a left-handed rifle to lend. Pilant, who can shoot a rifle as well from either side, shoots iron-sighted rifles left-handed, on his dominant eye’s side.

Under the ISSF’s rules there is a third way: a prism or mirror device on the rifle, with no magnifying lenses, for shooting from the right shoulder while aiming with the left eye (7.4.1.6 d).

For shooting you do not need to: a blinder decides which eye aims, as Tant’s tape does. Eye dominance is also less fixed than one test makes it look: tests can disagree, and in the reaching study above it switched with the direction of gaze.

Covering one eye for years may have a cost. In a 2025 study of 28 pistol and rifle shooters and 20 matched non-athletes, more shooting experience went with poorer balance between the two eyes, and the authors suggest that covering one eye often and for long periods may play a part. It is a small, cross-sectional study, and the authors note that it cannot show cause. If your eyes feel strained, tell your optometrist that you aim with one eye covered.

Do you close one eye when shooting?

You can, and some champions do. But an optometrist writing for Shooting Sports USA explains that closing one eye widens both pupils, which blurs the target, and may tighten the aiming eye’s lids. If the other eye sees the sights too, put a translucent blinder in front of it instead of squinting.

How do I shoot a pistol right-handed but left-eye dominant?

Try three ways on the range over a few sessions: the pistol in your left hand, aiming with your left eye; the pistol in your right hand, aiming with your right eye, a translucent strip in front of the left; or your right hand with your head rolled slightly so the left eye is behind the sights. Keep the one that gives the smallest groups.

What if neither eye is clearly dominant?

Try more than one test, and check with the gun in your shooting position, unloaded and checked, the muzzle in a safe direction. If both eyes still seem equal, an optometrist writing for Shooting Sports USA says such shooters can typically shoot well with either eye: choose your stronger side and screen the other eye.