How to Choose a Left Handed vs. Right Handed Bow

If you find yourself here, you’re probably asking yourself “Should I get a right or left handed bow?”. 

While you’d think that choosing a left or right handed bow would be simple: if you’re right-handed, use a right hand bow; if you’re left-handed use a left hand bow, that’s not quite correct. In fact, while hand dominance, or “handedness”, as it’s often called, plays a part in bow selection, eye dominance is arguably far more important, unless you have “cross” eye dominance. More on that later. 

For now, let’s discuss how both eye dominance and hand dominance factor into whether you should use a bow that’s left or right handed.

The Importance of Eye Dominance & Hand Dominance for Archery

Many beginner archers think that hand dominance is the most important factor in choosing a left or right handed bow. And while it does play a part in bow selection, eye dominance is what you want to consider more closely.

How to Determine Hand Dominance

Your dominant hand is the one you use to write with. Those who write with their right hand are said to be “right-handed”, or have right hand dominance. Those who write with their left hand are said to be “left-handed”, or have left hand dominance.

If you’re ambidextrous, then you are lucky, and your hand dominance or lack thereof will be of little consequence to what kind of bow you’ll use, and you can default to your eye dominance.

How to Determine Eye Dominance

Eye dominance is what it sounds like — namely, which one of your eyes, left or right, is dominant over the other. It’s important to note, as Archery 360 does, that eye dominance does not refer to which eye has better eyesight. Rather, it refers to which eye receives more input from your brain’s visual cortex.

Eye dominance is important to archery because you need to be able to properly and accurately sight and line up shots in accordance with the kind of bow you use (left or right handed). In short, when using your dominant eye, you get more accurate visual information about your shooting target.

There are several ways to test for eye dominance, but as Apex Hunting suggests, one of the easiest is to make a triangle with your two hands and stretch your arms in front of your face as far as they will go to focus on a picture or focal point on the wall. Close one eye at a time. If the object moves away and your field of vision focuses to something else, it means that is not your dominant eye. Conversely, if you can see the object with the eye that is open, that is your dominant eye.

Here’s where things get a bit muddy. Most people have eye dominance that matches hand dominance. In other words, if you’re left-handed, you are most likely left eye dominant, and should therefore use a left handed bow, and vice versa. But some people are what is called cross-dominant, meaning that they either are left-handed with a dominant right eye or right-handed with a dominant left eye.

Is a Right Hand Bow Only for A Right Handed Person & Vice Versa?

In short, no. And that’s due to cross dominance. Here’s a helpful chart that should help you choose the correct type of bow based on both your dominant hand and dominant eye, courtesy of David James’ article for Target Crazy entitled “Help! Do I need a left or right handed bow?”:

The reason James has “usually” listed for “Suggested Bow Type” for Cross Dominant archers is that it’s a best-practice to choose bow type based on eye dominance over hand dominance. 

Therefore,  If your left hand is dominant but your right eye is dominant, it’s suggested that you use a right-handed bow and train your left hand to shoot. If, on the other hand, your right hand is dominant but your left eye is dominant, you’re likely better off using a left-handed bow.

The reason for this is that it’s easier to train your non-dominant hand to adapt to shooting than to train your non-dominant eye for most people. That said, there are exceptions to this rule, and if you’re cross-dominant, it’s probably a good idea to visit an archery shop to try out different bows and see which one works best for you.

If, on the other hand, you’re not cross-dominant, there’s a good chance that you will be most happy and comfortable with a bow that matches your eye dominance.

Practice Shooting With AccuBow

Choosing a left or right handed bow in accordance with your hand and eye dominance is crucial to optimizing the accuracy of your shots. But even for those with eye and hand dominance that match, practice is also an essential part of developing your shooting skills sufficiently enough to shoot accurately on the regular. If you’re just starting out, the AccuBow is perfect to understand what is best for you. With all AccuBows being ambidextrous, you can better understand hand and eye dominance as you progress in your training.

Looking for a more fun way to get those practice hours in? Explore high quality right and left handed archery training devices at AccuBow today to practice shooting with your preferred bow type.