Blinder
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| Objective: To get you to look
at some issues of using a blinder. |
| Skill level: Probably the more
advanced shooters. |
| Time:A few details over a
night/week or month. If you want to save money you can do these
experiments with dry-fire. |
| Background All eyes are different. There is no single set of rules that will work for everyone. Eyes react in different ways to different light conditions, so it is worth experimenting with different blinder techniques to see if you can find one that suits you best. Remember that outdoor shooting is very different from indoor shooting and what suits you indoors may be terrible when used outside. We concentrate here on indoor shooting, and well away from ISSF rules! You need to read these notes in conjunction with the notes about your sight-picture, since a change in one can alter the other. In order to experiment with live-fire and different blinder techniques you probably need to be shooting reasonably steady scores so that you can attribute any difference to the blinder and not anything else. Initially we would suggest you either dry-fire or even dont-fire for a detail. Use the different blinder technique for a standard detail - go through the motions of firing - and see if your sight picture is as good at the end of the detail as it was at the start. Your brain has been designed to work best with binocular vision - where light hits both eyes pretty much at the same time. Try the school-kid experiment of standing in front of a mirror in reasonable light, and then cover one eye with your hand. You will get a sympathetic increase in size of the iris in the other eye. This lets in more light, compensates for the loss of light in one eye, but more importantly requires muscle changes inside the eye - all of which change your visual acuity. There is a wide range of different blinder approaches. These include:
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| Technique Lets see what can go wrong first. Set up a sighter and shoot a group of 5 shots with your usual blinder. Then shut one eye and fire 5 more shots at the same target. It is most likely that your 2nd group will be totally different. What does this tell you? Different light affects where the shot falls! A few other things may have happened as well. Analyse them and try to understand them. Your sight picture may have gone dark. You may see shadows/dark patches on the bottom of the front sight. You may even see eclipses rather than circles. These are to do with the different light and with the sympathetic alteration of the muscles in the cheek. A blinder attached to the rifle has the advantage of allowing you to scope easily. If you dont have one make one from a piece of card and clip it over the rear iris of your sights. Blue-peter sticky tape may be needed. If you like a rifle fitted blinder then make one from a translucent material - like plastic milk bottles. A blinder on the eye - either over your glasses or with a head-band - has the advantage of giving you more constant light on different days - dull/bright etc. Note that it can affect your ability to use the scope easily. You may have to trade one off against the other. Both eyes open. A lot of outdoor shooters use this approach. It has the major advantage that you can see wind flags, dust, grass blowing etc. However if your sighting eye is not dominant - or is not very dominant - it can be very difficult to keep the sight picture to the fore and stop the non-blinded eye taking over. A quick wink of eye usually helps your sighting take control again. It is impossible to be prescription but we would say - NEVER shut one eye to take a shot and whatever you do you should not change your blinder technique in the middle of a series of shots - unless you can sight in again. If your blinder moves, falls off etc you should put it back where it was before executing the shot. |