鉄砲道 — teppoudo

Please refer to my posts on Stereo Vision and Eye Alignment vs. Eye Focus for details on the issues.

This post covers a technique I’ve used to teach myself to shoot with both eyes open.

Essentially what needs to be done is to have your eyes aligned with the target and the eyes focussed on the front sight.

Please make sure that your firearm is clear of all ammunition, you have no ammunition in the room and you have a safe back stop. If you have any concerns at all, please do not attempt anything you see here.

The steps I followed were as follows:

• Look at a small target with your gun outside your field of vision. A tennis ball works well. The distance isn’t really important and you want to train at varying distances anyway.
• Make sure that you can see the tennis ball clearly.
• Bring the gun up into your field of vision.
• Since your eyes are still aligned with the target, you will see a blurry double image of the gun and the sights.
• Now slowly shift your focus back to the front sight so that you can see it clearly, while keeping the eyes aligned with the target.
• If you notice the target start to double, your eye alignment is changing with your focus. Stop, lower the gun out of the field of vision and start again.
• In the end you should see a double image of the gun, with the front sight crystal clear and a single image of the target which will be blurry.
• When you get tired stop.
• Repeat as necessary

Your index will easily solve the problem of the double image of the gun. With some practice it’s really not an issue. I used the exercises described on pages 170 & 171 of Practical Shooting – Beyond Fundamentals by Brian Enos to solve the problem.

Once you feel comfortable with a static target, suspend the tennis ball or a pop can on a string and practice with a .22. The moving target will really reinforce your training. I learned the moving target drill from a Steve Anderson post on Brian Enos’ forum.

This takes a while (it took me 4 months or so, practicing a few hours week.), but it does work. Stay with it.

I don’t wear corrective glasses and am not sure how they’d interact with this technique. However I believe that the principal is sound.

Feedback would be greatly appreciated.