Shooting With These Old Eyes

My main reason for writing these Musings is for my own catharsis. So be forewarned, this post will be random personal rambling and groaning about old eyes, and their effect on my shooting. For quite a few years I've been wearing glasses to correct near-sightedness, or myopia. Most folks, as they get older, trend to being affected by farsightedness, or hyperopia. (Yep, Google-foo comes in handy to find those fancy terms.) My optometrist keeps telling me I'm "lucky." In my case, my vision is sharp within arms-length, and degrades beyond that. This means I remove my glasses to do things such as eating and reading, and gazing into my lovely wife's eyes.

I've been noticing recently that my view of the sights on my pistol is not quite in focus when I'm wearing the prescription inserts for my shooting glasses, while the targets in the distance remain quite clear. The effect is exacerbated in low light. This isn't that much of an issue for close targets as precision aiming isn't so critical. But when I start shooting at targets 15, 20 or 25 yards away, the blurry edges of the sights can lead to a drop in accuracy when shooting at small targets. If I take the glasses off, the sights are sharp but of course everything in the distance is out of focus. What is interesting, and frustrating, is that the crossover point, where everything is in focus with my glasses on is a mere 4 inches beyond where the gun is held. I need longer arms, or perhaps I just need to wait until my vision degrades just a bit more!

It's accepted that "proper" aiming calls for focus to be on the sights, and the target beyond will be out of focus. So, I've considered simply forgoing the corrective lenses when I shoot. However I find it mildly disconcerting, and somewhat uncomfortable, to walk around with distant objects a bit out of focus, even if it's not all the severe. My reading tells me that does seem to be an option that many folks in the same situation choose.

It's a given that I need to get a slightly different prescription for the shooting lenses. Meanwhile I think I'll do some experimenting. On the next trip to the range I'll try going "correctionless" to see how it affects my comfort level walking around. I've also read on The Doodie Project forum a suggestion of correcting for distance only on the non-dominant eye. The poster says the brain will balance the two inputs. That's interesting but I can't test it without breaking my prescription inserts. I wonder if I have an old pair of glasses around that I could try it out with...

Anyone have the same problem? What's your solution?

Update, July 31: Problem solved.