Eye Dominance Test for Shooters
Which eye does your brain prefer for aiming? This simple test takes 30 seconds and tells you everything you need to know.
Extend Your Arms
Hold your arms out straight and raised to eye level. Keep your palms out and your fingers together with only your thumbs extending out.
Form a Triangle
Tilt your palms inward placing them one over the other to form a small triangular opening. You should be able to see through the triangle with both eyes open.
Focus and Pull Back
Looking through the triangle, focus on a distant fixed point — a doorknob, a light switch, anything small and stationary. Now slowly pull your arms back toward your face while keeping the object centered in the triangle.
Your Result
You will notice that you pulled your hands back toward one eye. That is your dominant eye.
Same side as dominant hand?
You have matching dominance. Cross-dominance is not an issue for you.
Opposite side from dominant hand?
You are cross-dominant. This affects your shooting accuracy. Read on for what to do about it.
What Does Cross-Dominance Mean for Shooters?
Cross-dominance affects your shooting because when you look at a target with both eyes open, the dominant eye picks up the target first. If that eye is on the opposite side of your gun mount, the brain establishes the wrong barrel-to-target relationship — you think you're aligned, but the barrel is actually pointing somewhere else.
Cross-firing or eye shifting is the phenomenon that happens when the non-dominant eye takes control of the aiming process while shooting at a moving target. This can be caused by tired eyes, poor eyesight, or weak or neutral eye dominance.
If you tested as cross-dominant, you have several options. Most traditional approaches — closing one eye, tape on glasses, dots, patches — force you into monocular vision, which reduces depth perception. For a full comparison of solutions, see our guide on how to fix cross dominance without losing depth perception.
To learn more about the condition itself, read our article on what cross dominance means in shooting.
Cross-dominant? Keep both eyes open.
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