Josh M asked:
Just started out hunting and I have a right handed bow that my brother-in-law gave me that was his old one. He tried showing me how to shoot it with both eyes open, but it wasn’t happening. I can close my right eye with no problem but I can’t close my left, I guess I’m screwed up like that. I bought an eye patch to cover my left eye; How difficult is this actually going to be? I’m going bow hunting for the first time on Sept. 19th and I have been practicing everyday for about 30-45 mins just shooting in my backyard, but I may get a small group around every other set. So I guess my question is do I just suck it up and use the bow for the rest of the season and buy a left handed bow next year year or continue to try to try and use the patch until I perfect it.
Just started out hunting and I have a right handed bow that my brother-in-law gave me that was his old one. He tried showing me how to shoot it with both eyes open, but it wasn’t happening. I can close my right eye with no problem but I can’t close my left, I guess I’m screwed up like that. I bought an eye patch to cover my left eye; How difficult is this actually going to be? I’m going bow hunting for the first time on Sept. 19th and I have been practicing everyday for about 30-45 mins just shooting in my backyard, but I may get a small group around every other set. So I guess my question is do I just suck it up and use the bow for the rest of the season and buy a left handed bow next year year or continue to try to try and use the patch until I perfect it.
Tags: Eye Patch, Eye Problem, Left Eye
Suck it up. LOL, well you see, you will need to use both eyes for depth perception. If you can get a left handed bow next year, then do it, you will see a significant change in how accurate you can become. Also, since your going to be hunting with this bow, practice shooting from a sitting position, and if you use a treestand, then shoot from an elevated position as well.
Practice closing your eye or wear some shooting glasses or safety glasses with a patch or duct tape on the lens for shooting.
I just practiced for awhile until I could close either eye……Practice everyday several times daily or buy a lefty bow…..
You are just going to screw yourself up when you finally do get a left handed bow. Maybe you can find an archery shop that will give you some credit on a trade of the right hand bow.
Go ahead and keep doing what you are doing. Hopefully you can get yourself a left handed bow next year. It is a good thing to learn how to shoot from both sides anyway as you don’t know when a shot might dictate that you use your other side.
Eye dominance is really what determines your shooting position, whether you need to learn to shoot right handed or left. One eye is always able to track things and determine distance better.
You can shoot right handed all you want, but if your left eye is dominant, you will not hit a danged thing with any consistency. And it doesn’t matter if you have one eye open or closed or you use both eyes open (which is what you probably should be doing for most archery anyway).
You check eye dominance by making a very small triangle with your hands, overlapping the thumbs and the fingers. Pick something far away and put it in the center of that triangle when it is extended at full arm length from you with both eyes open. Bring it back to your face, keeping the eyes open and the item in the center of the triangle. The triangle will wind up over the dominant eye.
You then need to get the equipment to shoot, whether left handed or right, and learn to do it right. If you go into the field and are doing as poorly as you are now, you will be injuring an animal instead of providing a clean, humane kill, which is ethically unacceptable.
There are people who teach themselves to use the other eye and therefore the other arm. My granfather was an example, but it was because he had broken his arm and the doctors of the era couldn’t set it straight so they kept re-breaking it. It takes a lot longer than you have to learn those skills, break out the wallet if you need to and get what you need to be an ethical hunter instead of a jerk in the woods.