Cross dominance, and no it's not about sex

I had a shooting lesson on Saturday morning, a birthday present -- yes, my birthday was in JANUARY -- from Al. It was very reassuring to know that I can properly mount, shoot and otherwise handle my gun. The problem was, I wasn't hitting any of the clay pigeons. We went through a whole box. Embarrassing for a person who has been shooting for 5 years. It all boiled down to one problem: Cross dominance.

Ah, if you are a hunter or a shooter, you know what I am talking about. If not, here's the test. Hold an arm out straight in front of you with your index finger pointed at an object across the room. Keep your finger fixed in that spot. Now shut each eye alternately. You will probably see your finger move off the object when one of your eyes is shut, while it remains pointed right at it as the other eye is shut. The eye that keeps your finger on the object is your dominant eye. In my case, it's my left. Therein lies the rub. Or the shooting inaccuracy, more precisely.

I instinctively line up the end of my gun with my left eye but shoot from my right shoulder. So I miss. Bigtime. To the left of the object every time. If I squint (a shooting no no, bad form, or something) and shut my left eye, I have perfect aim. I literally hit every target when I closed the left eye, and MISSED every target when I had it open.

I have a couple of weeks to fix this before we go shoot driven pheasant in England. My shooting instructor has some exercises for me to do to improve my pinpoint focusing. She gave some commentary on shooting, specifically, when woman are shooting v. men, interesting things come into play. For instance, females are generally multi-taskers. We have a hard time forcing our brains to look at the leading edge of a spinning disc. Running around after twin 2-yr-olds means that most of my time is spent splitting focus between at least 5 different things at a time. It would be more likely that I could describe everything in my view the second you made me close my eyes, rather than one part of the view in great detail. Whereas men, again, gross generalization, are very good at extreme focus on one finite object or task.

She also said women tend to shoot better if they are a little bit pissed off, because that is when we reign in and channel all our energies. So she told me to look for ways to get a little that way when I shoot. Hmm, so I guess I am going to look forward to being pissed off on our trip so that I can enjoy myself. Seems a little paradoxical.