Viral Olympic Shooter

https://www.npr.org/2024/08/01/nx-s1-5060078/turkey-shooter-olympics-glasses-gear-silver

This Olympic airgun shooter has gone viral.  Is the flip-down blinder really necessary, or helpful?  

He doesn't think so.

jobo10811 wrote:https://www.npr.org/2024/08/01/nx-s1-5060078/turkey-shooter-olympics-glasses-gear-silver

This Olympic airgun shooter has gone viral.  Is the flip-down blinder really necessary, or helpful?  

He doesn't think so.

He obviously has the ability to fully  utilize his dominant eye! Most shooters can’t for many reasons. The old timers squinted their off eye, then someone discovered if you cover your non-dominant eye, your eyes were more naturally relaxed. Unless, of course, he is focusing on the target like a trapshooter .

jobo10811 wrote:https://www.npr.org/2024/08/01/nx-s1-5060078/turkey-shooter-olympics-glasses-gear-silver

This Olympic airgun shooter has gone viral.  Is the flip-down blinder really necessary, or helpful?  

He doesn't think so.

Don't most BE masters shoot without blinders?

Air pistol is a single shot discipline, you have more time to establish a correct sight picture than you do in a discipline with sustained fire. As previously mentioned occluding the non dominant eye can help keep it more relaxed. I have successfully shot air without a blinder, in the past but I typically use one to keep my training as similar as possible across the different disciplines I shoot. 

To me the bigger take away is the simplicity, the fact that he was able to qualify first and finish second in the finals without any of the "enhancements" that are available is refreshing, it show that the sport is not an equipment race.

Now if only he had used a 
Baikal IZH-46M


Now, that would’ve really been something!

james r chapman wrote:Now if only he had used a 
Baikal IZH-46M


Now, that would’ve really been something!

If he ever had one, he probably wore it out!

"Don't most BE masters shoot without blinders?"

Hmmm..... not sure how many big matches you've been to, but AFAIK almost all Masters and HM's use some kind of non-dominant eye blinder.

Bullseye has its own minimalist Olympian in Keith Sanderson, well known for coming to the line with nothing more than a small backpack. He is now in Paris to compete in Rapid Fire. All the best and good luck Keith!

Re: Eyes Wide Open, or...
Post by Wes Lorenz Tue May 14, 2024 10:43 am

Why would you close or blind one eye when you don't do that for any thing else we humans do?
worked for me in Bullseye and Highpower.


I've been vindicated 
Without a blinder the shooter has much better depth perception of the front sight. It does take effort on the part of the shooter to train the brain to ignore the second target.

I am no great shooter, but trained myself not to use blinder. Well, maybe squint a little with both eyes due to vision defects. Why and how? Just plain lazy to look for the blinder as I dry fired at home ))

I know a hitman when i see one lol

james r chapman wrote:Now if only he had used a 
Baikal IZH-46M


Now, that would’ve really been something!

If I'm not mistaken, the Serbian man in the mixed team was using a relatively ancient LP300. That was the biggest equipment surprise I saw in all the finals.

Id show up at Nationals and Olympic trials with my stuff in a bag…I saw someone shooting the P100 etc 0 at Perry last year with no equipment beyond the pistol. Turned out to be Nick Mowher (sp) Shows you what’s important.I’ll try to post the photo

I used to cover my non dominant eye and then a pair of glasses broke and I started shooting with both eyes. At first I got more parallax. But when I Improved my grip and stance process that was no longer an issue.

Wes Lorenz wrote:Why would you close or blind one eye when you don't do that for any thing else we humans do?
worked for me in Bullseye and Highpower.

I can't explain it, nor can my eye doctor or Norman Wong when I asked them, but when I close one eye, the image in the other eye becomes sharper. It works with either eye and I do it all the time in real life when I need to see more details and don't need depth perception. Occluding the eye doesn't do it. I have to close, or mostly close, the other eye. I don't know if my brain can use all the visual processing power on one eye rather than split it between the eyes. I've probably done it since I was a kid, but only noticed it when I started shooting bullseye in my 30's.

As for why to occlude, when I tried shooting both eyes open I found that when shooting sustained fire sometimes I would recover back and use the right eye and sometimes recover back and use the left eye. I am sure I could have trained myself to recover back to the same eye each time, but a blinder solved the problem in seconds and I could go work on other issues.

As with almost everything in bullseye... try it and if it helps, do it. There is no one right way that works best for everyone.

As SteveT says "As with almost everything in bullseye... try it and if it helps, do it. There is no one right way that works best for everyone."

Eyesight varies tremendously between different folks and typically changes considerably with age. Or, like me, having had Lasik Eye Surgery several years ago correcting me to "mono-vision" so that I use my left eye for reading and right eye for distance. I use special glasses for shooting shotgun with both eyes open. Not really tried to shoot pistol that way, but, in my case, I am too easily distracted, so I like to occlude my non-dominant eye and also wear a hat with deep side blinder "flaps" to isolate me from as much distraction as possible.

There is no single "right way".

SteveT, I suspect you see sharper with one eye closed on your own accord due to second, dominant, eye slightly squinting. Usually the mechanics of closing one eye force all of the muscles to flex and so the other eye both squints and strains/flexes.

DRMFAI wrote:If I'm not mistaken, the Serbian man in the mixed team was using a relatively ancient LP300. That was the biggest equipment surprise I saw in all the finals.

Damir Mikec of Serbia has shot a few matches with newer equipment but goes back to the LP300. Supposedly someone in Europe figured out how to tune the trigger so these remained popular for a long time. I think Oleh Omelchuk of Ukraine kept using his for a long time too.

I guess being an out of production air pistol the air cylinder date will eventually keep these pistols out of the ISSF matches.

Does a four-time Olympian bringing a first-time Olympian to the Olympics count as bringing a junior to a match? lol

Closing one eye will have the effect of dilating the pupil in your shooting eye.  Pupils are hard-wired in your brain, so they are the same size.  If both are seeing light, they are small, if you close your eyes, both will expand.  If you have one eye open and one eye closed, they both go to an intermediate size.

THis has several results: the open eye will see a brighter image.  However the open eye will also get less of a depth of field.  Typically, I recommend that if you use a blinder, you use one that is translucent, not opaque; for instance putting scotch tape on the part of the lens that covers the target of your non-shooting eye.  This still lets in light, so your eyes dilate to where your body wants them, rather than forcing your shooting eye to over-dilate.

You can test this: look in a mirror and cover one eye with your hand.  You will see the uncovered pupil will expand.

To take this all a step further, without actually adding any answers :-), this has me thinking as I write this message: given that the inclination to close one eye seems so natural, is there actually a benefit to over dilating one eye and brightening the image?  As stated, you lose depth of field, which is normally a bad thing in shooting.  But you will get a slight contrast increase with more light.

Another thought: we talk about blinders and maybe scotch tape to blur the image, but how about just messing up your focus?  Shooters typically like to add between about +0.5 to +1.00 diopters to their distance vision to sharpen their focus on the sights.  If you add nothing to the non-shooting eye, it will stay relaxed while focusing on the target.  But if you added something like a +2.00 or even +3.00 to the non shooting eye, it would be focused at about 18" from you.  Great for writing in your logbook, or seeing the adjustments for the sights, but it would totally blur the target, and also blur the sights, so maybe your brain would just ignore the image from your non-shooting eye.

I'll go try this.  I'm not a bullseye pistol shooter, but I can make glasses.  I'll report back, and possibly recruit some actual good shooters to see if it works.

In closing, here is the data I have on power to add for shooting.  There are three data sets:
1.  I supply lenses to the MIT pistol team every year.  All kids 18-22 years old.  They are split, with about half adding +0.50 and half adding +0.75 to their distance vision prescription.  Interestingly, almost all of them have distance prescriptions that are in the -5.00 diopter range, which means they are very near sighted.  Dunno if near sighted drives you to reading more books, or the other way around, it is just an interesting statistic.

2.  Dr. Wong interviewed something like a dozen shooters about their shooting, including asking them about lenses.  They were older (age not given, but not college kids), and were roughly evenly split between using +0.50 and using +1.00, almost no one used +0.75.

3.  I measured about 30 shooters up at Camp Perry during the National Matches.  About 70% liked a +1.00 the best, with maybe 15% liking +0.75 and 15% liking +1.25.

My conclusion is that if you are young, +0.5 to +0.75 seems right, and as you progress and start to get presbyopia at around 40 years old, that number increases to around +1.00.  Obviously, there is a personal preference issue at play.  The stronger the lens, the closer your focal point, which will sharpen the sights, and blur the target.  However how much blur a shooter wants on the target is a choice, so different shooters will like different things.

2.  Dr. Wong interviewed something like a dozen shooters about their shooting, including asking them about lenses.  They were older (age not given, but not college kids), and were roughly evenly split between using +0.50 and using +1.00, almost no one used +0.75.

In this survey of the nation's top 16 shooters, 15 gave their ages while only 1 did not.

Norman H. Wong, O.D.

old picture..

Let's not forget Jim Lenardson who won the national championship shooting only iron sights while closing his eyelids of the non-shooting eye. As I was progressing in shooting only hardball in the Navy 48 years ago, we had no fancy-lad things such as occluders, apertures or plus adds. I naturally just closed my non-shooting right eye while shooting with my dominant left eye and using my right hand to hold the pistol. That was natural for me. I still find that to be most natural for me today. 

When I use a black occluder over my non-shooting eye, "black" may overcome my vision of the shooting eye. Conversely, when I use a "white" occluder, "white" may overcome my vision of the shooting eye. Yet, I'm extremely left eye dominant to such a degree that I cannot maintain seeing the iron sights of a rifle with my right eye.

I found using something like the small plastic self stick tag often attached to cheap glasses.  Ones that often say "polarized" and are about 1/2" square.
These placed in front of the non shooting eye blocks the view just enough.