Eyes on Target

by Brandon Begotka, OD

“If you can’t see it, you can’t hit it.” Whether or not you have heard this phrase
before, as a trap shooter you know it to be true. Every shooter understands that in order to
perform well you must be able to see well, but what does it mean to ‘see well’? In this
series of articles, I hope to help you to better understand the many visual skills necessary
to see the target accurately and precisely and how your vision can impact your
performance.

When most people think of vision, they think of 20/20. But how many people
know what that actually means? 20/20 is a measure of visual acuity, which is the ability
to see detail at a given distance. Every distance eye chart has a 20/20 line. The first 20
refers to the test distance, which is 20 feet. The second 20 refers to the distance at which
an ‘average’ person can decipher that size letter (for a 20/20 letter the size is a little
smaller than 3/8ths of an inch). If someone has 20/30 vision it means that an ‘average’
person (with 20/20 vision) can see that size letter at a distance of 30 feet, but the person
with 20/30 vision would have to move up to 20 feet to see it. While good visual acuity is
important to see the target clearly, seeing 20/20 is only one of many visual skills that are
critical to success in trap shooting.

One of the most important visual skills in any sport is depth perception, which is
the ability to perceive the spatial relationships between objects in visual space. There are
two types of depth perception: monocular (meaning one eye) and binocular (meaning two
eyes). Our brain uses both monocular and binocular depth cues to accurately determine
where things are in our visual space. The more information our brain has about these
relationships, the better our understanding of where things really are and the better our
performance in sports. Accurate binocular depth perception is critical for success in
sports and in order to have it both eyes must be working well together.
There has been a lot of discussion on the phenomenon of cross dominance and
how to overcome its effects. Many shooters have resorted to closing an eye or placing a
dot on their lens in front of an eye to reduce these effects. This may seem to help, but by
doing this he or she is unknowingly eliminating the accurate binocular depth perception
needed by the brain to accurately judge where the target is. In other words, the shooter is
eliminating the symptom that results from the two eyes not working well together instead
of the cause.

At this point you may be wondering, “Can the way a person’s eyes work together
and their depth perception be changed?” The answer is yes! In future articles we will
further explore the visual skills necessary to see well and how they relate to trapshooting.
Brandon Begotka is a developmental optometrist who practices at The Vision Therapy Center, located in both
Brookfield and Madison. In addition to his passion for helping to improve his patients’ vision, he enjoys both
trapshooting and sporting clays. He currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Wisconsin Optometric
Association and is a member of the College of Optometrists in Vision Development. More information about Dr.
Begotka and The Vision Therapy Center can be found at www.thevisiontherapycenter.com.