Dear Charlie,
I want to thank you for imparting
some of your optical knowledge and experience to me.
Here's my story.
Background:
Avid shotgun shooter and student of
the game for 56 years.
Left handed
Left dominant eyed
Disciplines:
Sporting clays
Wing shooting experience on multiple
continents
Previously-skeet, trap, and
flyers
My work and age related eye issues
have caused a deterioration of vision acuity in my left dominant eye has
occurred leaving me with 20/30 corrected in my left eye and 20/15 corrected in
my right or weak eye.
Frequently the right eye wants to be
dominant especially if the target is a right to left crossing one. I tried
teaching myself to wink (as many shot gunners do) at the point of hard focus
and firing. This was very difficult for me as it required thinking about doing
something instead of just watching the target. John David Shima is right as
rain. (Book -The Moment of Truth)
I live by the old adage and quote,
"How can a man think and hit at the same time?"
Lawrence Peter (Yogi) Berra.
I have relied on shooting aids such
as Vaseline, scotch tape, Spot Shot optical foils, friction tape, and other
devices to blur or block central vision in the right eye when the gun is in the
mounted position. After several days at a tournament, ones dominant eye becomes
fatigued and the weak eye begins to find a way to establish more control.
Looking around the dots is common and this results in poor or partial gun
mounts.
I was intrigued when I read about
your apertures and through several long listening sessions with you and a good
bit of trial and error on my own, I have discovered that using the wide or
"shotgun" sized aperture Eye Pal on my weak eye (in my mounted
central vision position on my shooting glasses) that I can see through the
aperture and have a depth of focus with that eye. The right eye (the weak eye)
doesn't "grab" the target resulting in the misses that I was having
with the other devices. I'm still experimenting and shooting with it and thus
far am very pleased. I want to order a number of them to have on hand for
students and friends. Typically if you point with your forearm hand finger in
front of your dominant eye you are pointing straight at the target object. If
you close your master eye then the finger is no longer on the target object.
With the Eye Pal the target "jump" experienced by this maneuver is
minimized or non-existent. This is not what I expected.
My eye fatigue that is normally
present using solid dots is greatly relieved using the Eye Pal. This was a
welcome experience.
I don't have all the answers but I'm
intrigued and excited about the learning experience and the improvement in my
consistency using the Eye Pal.
So far we have learned that the
handgun aperture is just a bit too small so I was glad to see your larger “Shotgun”
aperture in the mail recently. I’ll be happy to report on its affect at a later
date.
The Eye Pal is easily moved from one
set of glasses to another without harm and reuse is a snap.
For grins I put an Eye Pal on both
eyes of my regular Rx glasses in the proper place and watched an Atlanta Braves
baseball game. The depth of focus improvement was quite remarkable.
What would happen if a softball
pitcher or baseball pitcher used one on his master eye while pitching?
No matter, I thank you for your
kindness in helping me. Thank you for sharing your knowledge. I know that if it
helped me that it's highly likely that it will help others that are either
cross dominant, central dominant, or shooting off the wrong shoulder.
Best wishes in your endeavor.
With great respect I am,
Greg
R. Greg Stewart DVM MS Ph.D
Southern Veterinary Services
Inc.
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