Took my Para .45 and the Remington 700 down to the range to see if the operation on my right eye helped any. Confirmed what I figured, I can shoot equally bad with either eye now! Always been Left eye dominant and having my right eye dominant now kind of took a little getting used to.
While there, guy next to me was breaking in a new AR in .223 and he happened to ask me" how could I shoot with both eyes open"? Apparently he was watching me while waiting for his rifle to cool. Asked him if he was left or right eye dominant and he asked me how could he tell? Surprised, thinking it was common knowledge I showed him how to create a triangle with his hands at arms length, then focusing on something, in this case his target, and bringing the hands back, keeping his eyes focused on the target and sighting through his hands until they touched his face. Definitely Right eye dominant. Then he asked me why it mattered in relation to shooting with both eyes open.
I asked him if he was going to be around for a while and he said about another Hour so told him I'd have to think about how it came about and then would get back to him. Got to thinking about shooting with both eyes open and kept going back further and further and finally ended up back at Fort Sill, OK back in 1961.
Now for some of you young'uns, the fact that even the Army didn't have GPS in 1961 is going to come as a surprise. There were hints that they were working on a unit called PADS (Position and Azimuth Determining System) which was an Inertial Guidance System out of a Fighter Jet and when we finally ended up with the system in 1965, it occupied the entire rear seat area of an M-151 Jeep and took over an hour to initiate to usability. In order to accurately place Artillery rounds, some of which had a kill radius of 150 Meters, or in civilian terms, 492 feet, you had to have accurate Coordinates from where you were firing. Thusly, you had to have surveyors!
I entered surveyors school in about April of 1961 and at that time, a survey crew consisted of 2 Tape men (Chainmen) 1 Recorder who recorded all the measurements and drew up a plan of the survey, a T-2 or T-16 Theodolite instrument Operator, 2 Computers (personnel, not electronic) who did all the calculations manually and a Party Chief, and sometimes, if one was available a 2nd or 1st Lt. Now I'm going to skip over all the training that was required except for one position on the team.
Instrument Operators had to be able to look through a single eyepiece all day long while they were turning angles and if you scrunched up one eye or the other, all day, it put severe strain on the eye you were using, so the method of training that was used, was to try and teach the IO's to leave both eyes open while reading the instrument. Initially this was accomplished by holding one hand over the eye you weren't using until you got used to having both eyes open, but since you needed both hands to operate the instrument, they decided to block the non-using eye. They did this by putting a very loose 2" x 2" Gauze pad over one eye and taping it on with 2" medical tape.(This was before duct and 100 MPH tape) After a while, you got used to having both eyes open and after a while, your non using, open, eye would block all the signals to the brain and you could leave both eyes open all the time, even while using the instrument. This usually took about a half to a full day of instrument usage. I later transferred this over to Military peep sights, pistols and then Rifle scopes. Never really thought much about it once I had learned it.
On one memorable day, I asked the training NCO if there was an easy way to remove the eyepatch and he said it was easy if you were careful. He very carefully removed the tape from my cheek and then tore it off my forehead, taking about half my eyebrow with it. When it happened, I remember even saying shucks and darn, invoking language involving several deities and with blood running down my face, I had thank him for teaching me something new since he insisted on it. I had almost made the mistake of commenting on his parentage, but decided not to, which was one of my best decisions to that date! I never had to use an eye patch after that, but the swelling and infection in my eyebrow took almost 2 weeks to clear up. Finally the eyebrow grew back in about a year later. I don't think he actually thought it would rip out my eyebrow, and it surprised him too. Dumb ****!
This is back in the days when Training NCO's had NO limits, period, and didn't concern themselves with Politically correctness, not like today. They were known to take recalcitrant troops for walk out in the woods or behind a building and beat the Crap out of them until they either measured up, or the slow learners were discharged as non-desirable elements in the Military. One insubordinate slow learner beat the **** out of 3 NCO's simultaneously so they made him a Sergeant! This was typical back then.
Anyway, I told him the story and explained several less violent ways for the guy to learn to shoot with both eyes open and then left the range. I have often wondered how civilians ever learned to shoot correctly, and have in the last several years, leaned, mainly from what I see at the range, they haven't! Not talking about Hunters, or others taking shooting courses, talking about Joe **** the Ragman, average civilian out on the street. In a lot of cases he is more dangerous to himself and other shooters than to any game, including rabbits, out there!
Packrat
While there, guy next to me was breaking in a new AR in .223 and he happened to ask me" how could I shoot with both eyes open"? Apparently he was watching me while waiting for his rifle to cool. Asked him if he was left or right eye dominant and he asked me how could he tell? Surprised, thinking it was common knowledge I showed him how to create a triangle with his hands at arms length, then focusing on something, in this case his target, and bringing the hands back, keeping his eyes focused on the target and sighting through his hands until they touched his face. Definitely Right eye dominant. Then he asked me why it mattered in relation to shooting with both eyes open.
I asked him if he was going to be around for a while and he said about another Hour so told him I'd have to think about how it came about and then would get back to him. Got to thinking about shooting with both eyes open and kept going back further and further and finally ended up back at Fort Sill, OK back in 1961.
Now for some of you young'uns, the fact that even the Army didn't have GPS in 1961 is going to come as a surprise. There were hints that they were working on a unit called PADS (Position and Azimuth Determining System) which was an Inertial Guidance System out of a Fighter Jet and when we finally ended up with the system in 1965, it occupied the entire rear seat area of an M-151 Jeep and took over an hour to initiate to usability. In order to accurately place Artillery rounds, some of which had a kill radius of 150 Meters, or in civilian terms, 492 feet, you had to have accurate Coordinates from where you were firing. Thusly, you had to have surveyors!
I entered surveyors school in about April of 1961 and at that time, a survey crew consisted of 2 Tape men (Chainmen) 1 Recorder who recorded all the measurements and drew up a plan of the survey, a T-2 or T-16 Theodolite instrument Operator, 2 Computers (personnel, not electronic) who did all the calculations manually and a Party Chief, and sometimes, if one was available a 2nd or 1st Lt. Now I'm going to skip over all the training that was required except for one position on the team.
Instrument Operators had to be able to look through a single eyepiece all day long while they were turning angles and if you scrunched up one eye or the other, all day, it put severe strain on the eye you were using, so the method of training that was used, was to try and teach the IO's to leave both eyes open while reading the instrument. Initially this was accomplished by holding one hand over the eye you weren't using until you got used to having both eyes open, but since you needed both hands to operate the instrument, they decided to block the non-using eye. They did this by putting a very loose 2" x 2" Gauze pad over one eye and taping it on with 2" medical tape.(This was before duct and 100 MPH tape) After a while, you got used to having both eyes open and after a while, your non using, open, eye would block all the signals to the brain and you could leave both eyes open all the time, even while using the instrument. This usually took about a half to a full day of instrument usage. I later transferred this over to Military peep sights, pistols and then Rifle scopes. Never really thought much about it once I had learned it.
On one memorable day, I asked the training NCO if there was an easy way to remove the eyepatch and he said it was easy if you were careful. He very carefully removed the tape from my cheek and then tore it off my forehead, taking about half my eyebrow with it. When it happened, I remember even saying shucks and darn, invoking language involving several deities and with blood running down my face, I had thank him for teaching me something new since he insisted on it. I had almost made the mistake of commenting on his parentage, but decided not to, which was one of my best decisions to that date! I never had to use an eye patch after that, but the swelling and infection in my eyebrow took almost 2 weeks to clear up. Finally the eyebrow grew back in about a year later. I don't think he actually thought it would rip out my eyebrow, and it surprised him too. Dumb ****!
This is back in the days when Training NCO's had NO limits, period, and didn't concern themselves with Politically correctness, not like today. They were known to take recalcitrant troops for walk out in the woods or behind a building and beat the Crap out of them until they either measured up, or the slow learners were discharged as non-desirable elements in the Military. One insubordinate slow learner beat the **** out of 3 NCO's simultaneously so they made him a Sergeant! This was typical back then.
Anyway, I told him the story and explained several less violent ways for the guy to learn to shoot with both eyes open and then left the range. I have often wondered how civilians ever learned to shoot correctly, and have in the last several years, leaned, mainly from what I see at the range, they haven't! Not talking about Hunters, or others taking shooting courses, talking about Joe **** the Ragman, average civilian out on the street. In a lot of cases he is more dangerous to himself and other shooters than to any game, including rabbits, out there!
Packrat
