quote:

It obviously depends on the shooter, but I can’t help but wonder if the requirement in many rifle competitions these days such as NRL22 to shoot from one’s nondominant side as well as its being taught to tactical shooters has dispelled that bogey to a degree. I.e., to accomplish that, shooters who are not cross dominant must use their nondominant eyes for shooting. That’s what I did during certain patrol rifle training, and the only significant problem I had was being nearsighted in my nondominant eye and not wearing corrective lenses. (Cataract surgery mostly eliminated that problem, but I don’t teach nondominant side tactical shooting any longer anyway.)

I make our officers shoot non-dominant side as part of our long gun quals, and it's always the stage where I get cussed the most. But it's a real thing and may be necessary in the field for proper use of cover, or in the event of injury, so I keep making them do it.

It seems to vary from person to person what works best, but in my family the mostly follow the eye. My wife is right-handed but left eye dominant. She shoots rifles left-handed. My youngest son is left-handed but right-eye dominant, and he prefers to shoot them right-handed. The rest of my kids apparently followed my genes and didn't inherit this defect from my wife .

Closing the dominant eye also seems to help somebody being forced to shoot from the other side if they're really struggling to figure it out.

Good range report.

I never was able to convince mine to be interested in shooting. I DID turn her from being afraid/anti, so that's a total win.