Marksmanship Training for Girls (and Women)

This weekend I put some advice into practice and found it to work beautifully. We took my barely-teenaged sister out in the front yard to do a little shooting, and my dad had her mount his rifle to her right shoulder. She couldn't see through the scope at all.

I threw a red flag and had her give the rifle back to dad.

I told her to make a gun with her hand and aim it at me. Left eye, right hand. That is the fastest test I know of to help discover what is referred to as cross-dominance. I said to him, "She's cross-dominant," and to her, "Shoot from the left shoulder." She did, with the resultant (expected) zero difficulty using the scope.

As we found (for her using that rifle/scope combination), sometimes using a scope is near-impossible for a cross-dominant shooter using the "wrong" shoulder. Using open sights is somewhat easier but no less awkward, with the rifle on the "wrong" side. For someone with cross dominance, advise and train them right from the start to mount ALL long guns to the shoulder on the side that has the dominant eye. Most people have enough manual dexterity to be able to work the controls on a gun with their hands switched up.

From what I have heard (from Col. Cooper I think) about half the women out there will turn out to be cross-dominant. Don't freak out over it, it's no big deal, just have her mount long guns on the other shoulder as required for easy aiming. Handguns do not require holding with the "wrong" side hand; they can hold with their dominant hand because all you have to do is adjust your head a little -which comes naturally- to use the "other" eye.

Now get out there and train!