TRAIN YOUR EYES

One of the most common questions I was asked during the lockdown period is “what can I do to improve my eyes or keep them tuned up for when I return to shooting?” Shotgun shooters have always been interested in the latest cartridge, choke or coloured lens, but this shows that more people are thinking about how to enhance their own personal performance, rather than just relying on purchasing more expensive kit.

Having ‘perfect eyes’ won’t make you a perfect shooter, but vision and shooting are intrinsically linked; the accuracy with which you see the target dictates how you make the move to shoot it, and the coordination and synchronicity of your eye muscle system is linked to how repeatable that ‘pair dead’ becomes. Since 2010, I have examined the eyes of more than 1,200 shotgun shooters, from amateurs to World Champions and Olympic medallists. Without exception, all of the highest performing individuals have superlative visual skills.

This is partly to do with the ability of our eyes to resolve detail, called our