The Myth of Eye Dominance in Shotgunning and the Reality of the Subconscious Mind
by Ralph Cushman INTRODUCTION I live in Alaska and have been teaching youths to shoot shotguns for 20+ years. I have coached some to very high levels of shooting. In one sense I am just like the many hundreds of other volunteer kids' coaches around the country. But in another sense I am fairly unique -- I take kids who are right-handed but have strongly dominant left eyes (or vice-versa) and teach them how to be excellent shotgun shooters shooting off their dominant (usually the right) shoulder with both eyes wide open at all times, and with no tape on their lens or any other vision-blocking/impairing device. The vast majority of professional instructors and coaches say that cannot be done, that is is a waste of time to try. They simply do not know how to do it. I used to give eye dominance tests to beginners, just like most other coaches/instructors do. If they tested cross-dominant I would tell them they either needed to shoot with th...