Do you have vision issues hunting, and what solutions?

I like weapons with scopes so I can adjust focus to my glasses and not my older eyes. Another reason I got away from compound bows.

That sounds rough! Kudos for overcoming.

I normally leave my glasses at home when I'm hunting. They have a slight tint that I notice at dusk. They also fog up from my face mask. I can see good without them. My dad has worse vision than I do. He doesn't wear his glasses either. He tapes an old lens to the front of his scope. I let him borrow my rifle this past season and now I have tape adhesive all over my scope. I wasn't very happy about that.

Optics on all long guns except 44 mag lever gun. Just could bring myself to scope it. Cataract removal really helped with handguns; although, at fourscore & ten, things are a wee bit fuzzy.

Use optics on all my long guns and just had clarifier put on my bow. It helped tremendously. Cost was $60 and if my eyes get worse, they just put a different magnification in the peep.

The last time I went to the eye Dr he told me I was cursed with one prefect eye and one near prefect eye (20/20 & 20/30).

The problem is my dominant eye is the weaker one, and my eyes fight for dominance. I have to close my left eye when shooting my bow or my left eye will take over and the arrow will miss the target my two feet.

It's not as bad with iron sights, but sometimes I still have to squint my left eye to make the right be dominant. I have no issues using scopes or red dots.

I have to wear glasses for both hunting and looking through Binoculars . I have weak muscles in my left eye and my eye won’t stay looking straight ahead it wants to cross Solution/ they put a prisom in the glass and my vision is distorted in the direction I need Pretty cool ! You don’t notice it looking at me but it works . I think of the Pink Floyd Album Cover l “Dark Side Of The Moon ”. Lol

I've also been very near-sighted my whole life. 20/220 in my right eye, a little better in my left. With age, I've also picked up a few of the other problems most of us do as older hunters.

Presbyopia is the main one that most of us have problems with regarding hunting and shooting. It's the reduced capacity to focus our eyes for over a range of differing distances. We usually first notice it wen we have to hold our newspapers at arm's length to read them, but still are able to see a squirrel sitting on a high branch in a tall tree. By then, our iron sights have gotten kinda fuzzy and our sight pins on our bows have gotten very fuzzy and may have been replaced by bigger ones and brighter ones.

There are other solutions, such as optics for the guns and verifiers/clarifiers for the peep sights. Most of them have their own set of drawbacks and limitations. Some work for most, some work for others, but few if any work for everyone. The best solution is to correct your vision if you can, but even then, the method of correcting the vision usually has limits or drawbacks. It becomes a matter of personal choice between the lesser of the evils, pretty much like politics.

The one I like best is daily contact lenses, with a different prescription for the aiming eye than for the other eye. The normal method is for the optometrist to prescribe a lens for each eye to give you the maximum sharpness at long distance. I have read that some optometrists now prescribe a little less strength of correction as the normal practice, since most of the public will use that maximum distance rarely, and are happier with a compromise that sacrifices just a little less distance sharpness for a little more comfort at closer ranges before needing to put on their reading glasses.

If you can convince your optometrist that you really know what you want and that it is something other than the standard they have been trained to prescribe, they will often be open to providing a few contacts for you to try for a week or so to decide which strength is better for your particular needs.

I was still playing golf when I began using different strength contacts, and found that I liked them a lot for that activity as well as shooting and hunting. I could still watch my ball disappear into the rough on a long drive and visually mark the spot to begin my search, and didn't need to switch to my reading glasses to make another snowman in the right place on my scorecard. I had heard bowlers speak of doing the same thing. I got the aiming eye contact in the reduced prescription strength for shooting, but found I liked it better for most daily uses as well. Driving, the gauges and their readings were there in sharp focus at a glance and the road signs were still readable at the earliest opportunity. Shopping, I didn't need to fish the readers out of my pocket to read the ingredients or instructions on the packages, or walk around with them perched on the end of my nose. I had no problems at all with keeping them in all day most days and for most activities.

I did find that I would occasionally have that sudden miss to the left about two feet on a thirty yard target while shooting 3D's as 36fan describes above, until I finally figured out the cause and began shutting the non-aiming eye at final aim. And I would feel a little eyestrain after three or four hours of constant reading on rainy days, so if I was planning to settle in with a book for a good long read, I'd usually use my regular bifocals.


As it applies to shooting, the idea is to use a contact that brings the front sight of your long gun just into sharp focus, allowing the rear sight to slightly fuzzy and the target to also be slightly fuzzy. As hunters, we are reluctant to allow our view of our target to be in anything other than our sharpest vision, but our best option for accuracy is really having the pin or front sight as sharp as we can make it for the aiming eye, even if that means we need to shut the other eye as we come to final aim.

That deer or squirrel will still be visible to your aiming eye even if does appear to have its full winter coat on instead of its slick summer pelt, but if your sight or pin is fuzzy, the accuracy of its placement will be much more variable. And in lower light, when we are often wishing we had just a few more minutes of light, a front sight or sight pin that's in sharp focus will still be there, when one that's fuzzy will become fuzzier or disappear altogether.

Presiopia translated is “Old Age “