September, 1921 
FOREST AND STREAM 
405 
REFINEMENTS 
IN 
GUN-FITTING 
DEVELOPING A SHOTGUN STOCK TO SUIT 
THE RIGHT-HANDED, LEFT-EYED SHOOTER 
By JACK FANNING 
T HE early application of the dis- 
covery of gun powder to weapons 
of the chase took the form of a 
smooth bore musket loaded with a slug 
many years before shot was manufac- 
tured and the art of wing shooting de- 
veloped. In fact, while gun powder 
and muskets are six hundred years, old, 
wing shooting has only a little over a 
hundred years behind it and in the 
passing from the single slug weapon 
to the load of many pellets every text 
and precept that govern the manipula- 
tion of the single slug weapon was re- 
ligiously retained. 
To begin with: old fashioned mus- 
kets and rifles and many of the older 
types of shotguns had both front and 
rear sight, and the approved method of 
aiming was to close one eye, crook the 
neck so as to bring the face down on 
the stock, squint along the barrel and 
endeavor to focus the breech, the rib 
of the gun, the front sight and the par- 
ticular object it was desired to hit, all 
at one time which, by the way, is an 
optical impossibility. 
In the rifleman’s school of gunnery, 
it has always been taught that accur- 
acy of aim was attained only by closing 
one eye. This tradition has been handed 
down to the shotgun school and retained 
until within a comparatively recent 
period. Summing it up is to say that 
while one eye is a reliable and accurate 
instrument of vision, two eyes are not; 
consequently the first principle to be 
accepted in the manipulation of the 
shotgun was: close one eye and squint 
down the barrel with the other. 
F O R many 
years this 
principle was 
not questioned, 
then there came 
along the modern 
shotgun coach 
who studied the 
sub j ect from every 
angle and brought 
to bear a knowl- 
edge of optics, 
the human nerv- 
ous system and 
the special senses 
actuated by muscles in sympathy with 
each other, it is only upon very rare 
occasions that they are of equal 
strength, and that almost invariably 
one eye is so much stronger than the 
other that it dominates all visual im- 
pression. This eye is known as the 
master eye. 
Under the old system of shooting 
with one eye closed and the gun aimed 
by squinting along the barrel, the ques- 
tion of which eye was the master never 
entered into the equation of the wing 
shooter, for he confined himself to the 
use of one eye, although by doing so 
his power of vision was limited just 
one-half. If the master eye happened 
to be the right eye, in the case of a man 
who was a right handed shooter, there 
was little difficulty in his becoming a 
two-eyed shot; that is, a man who shot 
with both eyes open. If, however, it 
happened, as is frequently the case, that 
his left eye was the master eye and he 
was a right-handed shooter, two-eyed 
or binocular shooting to him became al- 
most an impossibility. He missed his 
straight away birds unless they were 
very close to him, he was frequently 
particularly deadly on left crossing 
birds, but fell down sadly on those that 
were going to the right. 
It is for these reasons that the first 
thing the modern coach and gun fitter 
ascertains in taking a pupil in hand is 
which is his master eye. The method 
for settling this question is set forth 
in the book “Guncraft” as follows: 
“Hold an ordinary finger ring about 
two feet away from the face and with 
both eyes open locate some small object 
The left 
eye looks 
down the 
center of 
the rih 
the right eye be closed and the sight of 
the left eye be continued through the 
ring, it will rest considerably to the 
right of the object which was in line 
of vision with both eyes open or the 
left eye closed. If the left eye is the 
master eye; after the object has been 
brought into view through the finger 
ring with both eyes open, with the clos- 
ing of the right eye alone the object still 
will remain in view, but where the left 
eye is closed and the line of sight 
through the ring is continued by the 
right eye alone, it will rest some dis-- 
tance to the left of the object which 
was in view with both eyes open and 
the right eye closed.” 
I N the case of a right-handed shooter 
whose left eye was the master, it 
was formerly recommended that he 
learn to shoot from the left shoulder. 
This, however, as a rule does not work 
out very well in 
Showing gunstock cut away to accommodate the left eyed shooter 
involved in the 
consumation of a successful shot at a 
moving object. One of the first things 
the scientific gun coach discovered was 
that although apparently both eyes are 
of the same size and appearance and 
four or five yards distant; do not move 
the ring from its position, but close 
the left eye, and if the right continues 
to see the object centrally through the 
ring then the right eye is the stronger, 
or master eye; continuing further, if 
practice as it calls 
for a general re- 
co-ordina t i o n of 
muscles that the 
average man, par- 
ticularly those 
who have reached 
middle life, are 
unable to develop. 
The solution of 
the problem was 
passed up to the 
gun-fitters, and 
through their efforts various types of 
stocks have been developed. 
The first among them was one with 
an unusually large drop. This had a 
tendency to swing the gun more or less 
(continued on page 410 ) 
